The Wind 
• in • 
the Garden 

Hewes Lancaster 




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THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


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The Wind in the Garden 

by 

Hewes Lancaster 

Author of ** Marie of Arcady*’ and 
The One and the Other’ ’ 



BOSTON 

The Stratford Company 
1919 


Copyright 1919 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 


Idebtcateb to 

The Fairest Garden of All 
When One Lies Sleeping 




Contents 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

I. 

The Garden 

1 

II. 

The Wind 

30 

III. 

The Wind in the Garden 

42 

IV. 

The Weeping by the Water . 

53 

V. 

Bogue Vache 

68 

VI. 

The Wind and His Bride . 

77 

VII. 

The Boss 

81 

VIII. 

The Soul in Purgatory 

87 

IX. 

The Chaud-Tete 

91 

X. 

The Little Green Book 

102 

XI. 

The Flower in Her Hair . 

105 

XII. 

The Talking of the Star 

110 

XIII. 

On Guard 

116 

XIV. 

Tracks 

126 

XV. 

The Garden Where the Wind Had 



Ceased to Wander .... 

148 


I 


CHAPTER I 


The Garden 

“She was not at grave/’ Madame Bigone said, 
“mais, maybe she was at church?” 

Madame Croisant shook her sorrowful head. Not 
being one of the chief mourners she could confess to 
having considered the crowd: 

“I look, me,” she said. “Look plenty — God 
knows.” And she sighed, for, indeed, Virginia 
Cleve had not been at her father’s funeral. 

The boat-loads of people returning from that fun- 
eral were streaming past M. Lerot’s garden. It was 
a wonderful garden, willow-wound and water-dip- 
ped, where hyacinths tangled and green things 
leaned over and the sun shone down; hut each man 
in passing kept his boat clear of it as from a thing of 
fear. 

Madame Bigone lifted her paddle from its steering 
and pointed discreetly toward the old shack on the 
farther shore : 

“Ife was not at grave?” 

Madame Croisant admitted it, sighing sorrowfully 
again. 

“He was closest kin Brave Bigone have,” Ma- 
dame Bigone said severely. “He was half-brot’er wit’ 
Brave. ’ ’ 

Madame Croisant, very thin and timid, was also 

[ 1 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


very tender in her heart and so in the face of her 
wise cousin’s disapproval she began to excuse the 
old man’s disrespect to the dead: 

“Mais M. Lerot,” she said, “he has lived by him- 
self for such long time — wit’ only fish to eat.” 

But Madame Bigone was wordly-wise. She had 
indeed, once gone out into the world — as a nurse in 
the family of a sugar planter — and lived there for 
nearly two weeks. She put the apology pitilessly 
aside : 

“Pierre Lerot is crazy,” she said. 

Then, of course, the silent M. Bigone said what he 
always solidly said when the craziness of his cousin 
came into discussion — 

“It is only for Mississippi river Pierre is crazy” 
— and Madame being too shrewd to waste an argu- 
ment on this stubborn belief, went back to the short- 
coming of Virginia, the dead man’s daughter: 

“Eh bieni I reckon, me, Virginia t’ink it is not 
only her papa who can get mad, maybe ? When she 
run and make marry wit’ American school teacher, 
her papa tell her never come on his side of Island 
some more. I reckon she t’ink she will not come, 
no!” 

“Ah,” Madame Croisant said, “maybe it is Vir- 
ginia did not hear her papa was sick.” She urged 
the excuse eagerly. — “M. Brave Bigone, he die so 
quick. ’ ’ 

And, indeed he had died quickly — that powerful, 
passionate old man who had lived his life so hotly 
and so hardly, who it seemed must always live. Be- 

[ 2 ] 


THE GAEDEN 


fore the Messieurs had exchanged in passing a 
single : 

‘‘Et Brave Bigone, you have hear how he is? 
No?’^— 

Before Madame could ask of Madame, — Brave 
Bigone was dead. 

The boat passed on in silence; the falling wind 
blew over ; and all the garden breathed its sweetness 
to the sinking sun. 

M. Lerot came down to the water’s edge as he 
always did at the day’s last hour. He had no garden 
on land, his shabby little shack stood desolate upon 
its bit of unkept batture. But here by the water he 
could smoke, and watch the light as it stole across 
in gleaming lines to lie down lovingly among his 
tangled masses of tossing bloom — his water-hya- 
cinths. 

“Seem like you grow pretty fast,” he said to 
them, tenderly, “You have most take my landing, I 
reckon, me, you going to take all False river, ha?” 
His eyes brooded over the beauty that was crowding 
him out of his one possession that was worth the 
having but there was no reproach in the brooding. 
How beautiful they were! — Gay flower and green 
leaf tangling and massing and foaming together 
there on the dreaming water I 

“If,” Monsieur said, measuring their wide ex- 
panse with a loving eye, “if you don’t quit grow so 
much it will soon be so man cannot pass up river. 
I don’t believe, me, skiff can pass t ’rough yonder 
now.” He pointed his cigarette toward the cut 

[ 3 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


across from the southern bend that the boats, return- 
ing from the funeral, had so carefully avoided. 

Ever since the Mississippi had made him mad, M. 
Lerot had lived alone. In his youth, men who knew 
had warned him how it would be. They had said 
earnestly : 

“Pierre, when River make her mind to be mean to 
a man, what it is man should do? Voila, he should 
go live hundred miles from her. 

But Pierre Lerot had been a proud young man, big 
and strong. 

He had laughed at the warning and slapped his 
paddle into the face of the Mississippi. And when 
the River in revenge had overturned his rafts in her 
eddys and set snags to wreck his boats, Pierre had 
laughed and defied her yet again. So they had 
striven, blow for blow until one day when Pierre was 
rowing across to take his girl to church the River 
had caved in the bank on which the girl stood wait- 
ing and waving to him. And then, having robbed 
him of his love and youth, and of all the eagerness 
of his life, the River gave Pierre in exchange the 
smell of her mud to be as madness to him forever. 
That was why after fifty years of time, men said 
even yet of old Pierre Lerot that he was crazy about 
the Mississippi. 

M. Lerot was not crazy about other things. Smok- 
ing, with his eyes on that bend in False river he 
had seen clearly what would befall a boat that 
should try to take the short cut across — how it 
would be caught in the tangle and held helpless 

[ 4 ] 


THE GARDEN 


there. And when he w£is awakened that night by a 
child’s voice calling in his garden he knew at once 
what had happened: 

‘‘My hyacinths have catch boat for somebody, 
yes!” 

He went down to his landing and listened. A 
fog was walking upon the face of False river — out 
of it came the call: 

‘ ‘ Grandpa, Grandpa. I am afraid 1 I am afraid 1 ’ ’ 

“Mon Dieu, it is little girl,” said Monsieur, and he 
called in answer: 

“Reste tranquille, ma Bebe. Your Grandpa will 
come to you.” 

He shoved his pirogue into the water and cau- 
tiously, through the drip and drizzle of the fog, 
pushed his way into the tangle. 

Comforted in his arms before the fire the little 
girl told him how it was: 

“My mamma say to me, reste in boat till she come 
with my Grandpa. ’ ’ She nestled closer into the arms 
that had saved her. “My Grandpa is hig man,” she 
said satisfied. “It is plenty times my Mamma has 
tell me my Grandpa is big man. And she asked 
sleepily : 

“Where is my Mamma?” 

M. Lerot bent his head to escape the drowsy eyes. 
He had found the boat caught in the very heart of 
the tangle but the mother who had left the boat to 
swim ashore for help he had not found. Yet M. 
Lerot knew well enough where she was: 


[ 5 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘‘I reckon, ma Bebe your Mamma has gone long 
way, maybe. 

“Long way,’^ the little girl echoed, and while she 
was being fed and cared for she kept telling the 
thought over in drowsy fashion : 

“My Mamma has gone long way.’’ 

The murmur made Monsieur think of a tolling bell. 

“She is for me,” he said when he sat rocking the 
little sleeper in his arms. “She is for me. My hya- 
cinths see how it is I am old man and all by myself 
in my shack. What it is hyacinths do? Voila. 
Watch chance to catch baby for me. And it is gar- 
den she shall have. Garden on land. It shall be 
pretty as she is pretty. All night Monsieur thought 
of them — the gardens of Pointe Coupee, fence- 
bound and fragrant. But toward morning he re- 
membered that there must be yet another garden of 
green things grown for his little girl. B6be cannot 
eat only fish like old man can,” he said. And day- 
light found him climbing the bank at the Bigone 
landing. 

M. Bigone coming down for a look at False river 
gave courteous greeting, but M. Lerot had not time 
to waste upon brave manners. He asked : 

“Ha, Charles? You got some cowpea you wish to 
sell for seed?” 

“Seed,” M. Bigone repeated. He was a heavy 
man ; some said he was slow. ‘ ‘ Seed ! ’ ’ Pierre Lerot 
had not planted a seed for fifty years. 

“If you have seed to sell — Voila vingt-cinque 
sous. ’ ’ 


[ 6 ] 


THE GARDEN 


It was indeed twenty-five cents that he held in 
his palm and M. Bigone seeing it measured out the 
peck of peas. His amazement he could not measure 
out — it foamed over his lips like spilled milk: 

‘‘Nom de Dieu, Pierre. For why you should wish 
to make garden?” 

Monsieur, pushing his pirogue into the water, ex- 
plained over his bowed shoulder : 

“Little girl cannot eat only fish like old man can.” 

“Little girl!” 

“Oui,” Monsieur said taking seat easy and sure 
as a duck on water. “My hyacinths have catch 
Bebe for me. I must hurry; she will wake up and 
be scared some more.” He raised his brows at M. 
Bigone ’s staring. “Her Mamma?” He pointed his 
paddle. “Hyacinths hold her yonder.” 

Madame Bigone was frying eggs for breakfast and 
her guest, Madame Croisant, was slicing the bread 
when Monsieur came in and told his astonishing 
news : 

“And he say her Mamma is — ^yonder!” 

The Mesdames stood staring, fear in their faces. 
Behind them the eggs sputtered and popped. 

“Pierre Lerot is crazy,” Madame Bigone tried to 
say. 

Monsieur shook his head as solidly as he had done 
last evening on the water: 

“It is only for River Pierre Lerot is crazy.” 

They knew, all three of them, what it was they 
must do but only timid little Madame Croisant could 
say it: 


[ 7 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘‘We must go look/’ she whispered, “we must go 
look for woman in M. Lerot’s garden.” 

They went, Madame steering. Monsieur at the 
oars, Madame Croisant in the bows, keeping fearful 
lookout. They came to the empty boat and Madame 
Croisant said softly: 

“Ah, my God.” How many times had she seen it 
moored at the landing next her own on the other side 
of the Island! And the woman who had left that 
boat to swim ashore? Madame Croisant was an- 
swered before she could question. Across a small 
clear space, caught in a thicker tangle Madame saw 
a sunbonnet string she had helped to sew; it clung 
to a spike of purple blossom and flagged fitfully, 
without hope in its windmade mission. 

“Oh, m’amie, m’amie. I pray God you are safe.” 

Yet even as she prayed, M. Bigone pushed his boat 
in among the hyacinths and Madame Croisant fell 
to sobbing for the sorrow of it. 

“Virginia, Virginia. Ah, she had heard her papa 
was sick. She had come hurry to say she was sorry 
— Ah, m’amie, m’amie!” M. Bigone crossed him- 
self, his Madame prayed! Clasped close to the 
heart of the hyacinths the woman in the garden lay 
white-faced and still. 

M. Bigone, being her cousin, could carry Vir- 
ginia’s body to his house and have the masses said 
for her soul. But about her little five-year old 
daughter, what could he do? 

Madame his wife, was positive that he should do 
something. 


[ 8 ] 


THE GARDEN 


What if Pierre Lerot was the child’s nearest liv- 
ing relation? What if it was in his garden that her 
mother had left her? 

“You going leave baby in shack wit’ old man who 
have no head — so little and so pretty like she is ? ” 
Madame questioned her Monsieur indignantly 
nearly every day of the summer that followed. And 
patiently in reply Monsieur stated all the points in 
M. Lerot ’s case. 

“Her papa is dead. His people do not live on 
Island. Me, I do not know where M. Cleve’s people 
live. Pierre is closest kin little Virginia have.” 

And woman of the world though she was, Madame 
Bigone herself could find no pretext for taking his 
baby away from old man Lerot, until grinding sea- 
son began ; then the school on the Island was opened 
and Madame saw her chance : 

“Cher,” she cried, “old man Lerot should send 
Virginia to school. All children should go to school 
— ’T is for why we pay tax.” 

Monsieur was dubious about it but Madame was 
eager : 

“Go,” she urged, “go quick to Pierre Lerot and 
say to him he must send Virginia to school.” 

Monsieur suggested, unwilling to go: 

“Maybe it is Virginia will not wish to go to 
school.” 

“Mais non, she will not wish. And her Grandpa 
will not wish if she does not wish. Ma foi, it is 
Grandpa spoil child all time. Me, I am sorry to see 
my Albert go make visit wit’ his Grandpa, I know 


[ 9 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


it is plenty switch I shall have to break when he 
come home/’ 

Madame Croisant who was there, seeking news of 
the little girl, put in gently: 

‘‘Mais, cherie. Child should go make visit wit’ 
its Grandpa some time.” 

“Oh, mais oui,” Madame Bigone admitted hastily, 
“Child must go make visit wit’ its Grandpa and it 
must step on nail and have chill and fever and get 
its finger mash in door — Va, cher! Va vite! Tell 
old man Lerot he must send Virginia to school on 
Monday. And when he say he cannot make her go 
it is you must say : 

‘Eh bien, Pierre. I recken, me I better take little 
girl to live in my house and my Madame, she will 
make her go to school.’ ” 

Madame Croisant who had known the American 
teacher and his ’Cajan wife as neighbors know each 
other began to say: 

“Maybe little Virginia will wish to go to school” — 

But Madame Bigone cut her off with that wide 
knowledge of the world that she had acquired in 
her youth: 

“Wish to go? Ma foi, you reckon any child on 
earth is going wish to go to school?” 

So Monsieur went, and all the way across the river 
he was bothered by the look he had seen in M. 
Lerot ’s eyes that morning when he sold him the 
twenty-five cents’ worth of cowpeas. 

“Seem like Pierre has done all man can do,” he 
said to the beautiful blue water, “Look patch he 


[ 10 ] 


THE GARDEN 


have wit’ cowpea and rice and cabbage — every- 
t’ing child should wish to eat. Look goat he has 
got to give milk for her. Look garden he has made 
so she will have place to play. It is pretty, yes. And 
for why he should not keep her if he wish? He is 
closest kin she have — now Brave Bigone is dead. 
But my Madame ” — He tied his boat slowly : 

Maybe it is my Madame is right — little girl 
should be wit’ woman. But look her yonder, seem 
like she is happy. She is clean!” 

Little Virginia was clean and happy too, dancing 
her dolly in the shade of her shack. Pierre Lerot 
was watching her, pleased and proud as an old man 
may be, when M. Bigone came into his garden and 
heavily, clumsily gave the message as he understood 
it : 

“School begin next Monday and child should go to 
school. ’T is for why we pay tax — ’T is so my 
Madame say.” 

M. Lerot raised himself from spading and looked 
with horror into Monsieur’s bothered eyes: 

“But dose school teacher,” he said sternly, “dey 
beat children, yes.” 

M. Bigone made no effort to deny it: 

“It is so I know,” he said unhappily. 

Pierre Lerot put down his spade: 

“And you t’ink I will send my Bebe to be heat?” 
he demanded. 

M. Bigone had no reply for this. He went on and 
stated the case as he had been told to state it: 

“If you cannot make Virginia go to school I will 


[ 11 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


take her to my house and my Madame will make her 
go.’' 

“Make her go? Make my Bebe go to be beat?” 
M. Lerot stood and looked into the face of the man 
who had the heart to say such a thing. The haze 
from the sugar house drew over, the silence fell. 
Again it was as it had been on that day of long ago 
when the River, cruel as she was, yet paused to 
catch her breath before she caved in the bank on 
which his sweetheart stood waiting — and waving 
to him. “Make ma Bebe go to be — beat?” 

M. Bigone could offer no word of comfort. It was 
the little girl who with her new dolly in her arms 
came to clasp the old man’s shaking hand: 

“ ’T is only bad boy who is beat,” she said. And 
she explained. 

“It is plenty times my Mamma has say to me. 
When little girl go to school she should be good 
little girl and learn like teacher say and she will not 
be beat. She will be happy and she will be head all 
the time.” 

The two Messieurs stared down at the wise little 
maid. M. Bigone missing the ’Cajan accent of her 
English, marveling at this cheerful view of school, 
amazed. M. Lerot in swift proud joy, yet hardly 
able to believe. He it was who questioned : 

“Teacher will not beat little girl when she go to 
school if little girl learn like teacher say?” 

Virginia was sure of it. 

“ ’T is so my Mamma say,” she asserted, and all 


[ 12 ] 


THE GAEDEN 


unmoved by the emotions she had excited, stuck pins 
into her dolly with an air of motherly solicitude. 

‘^And ma Bebe is going to be good little girl,’^ M. 
Lerot said proudly, and swept her up shoulder high. 

Virginia caught him about the neck : 

‘‘Mais oui,’^ she cried and hugging him tightly, 
continued : 

“I shall have book and lead pencil, my Grandpa! 
And I shall learn to read in book like papa could 
read — ’T is plenty time my Mamma has told me 
my papa could read in book, could write in book. 
And when it is I shall go to school, my Grandpa?” 

M. Bigone turned to look once more at the picture 
framed in the sweet gray shade of the shack — the 
old head lifted to the bright baby face, — and saw 
the sunken eyes where gladness grew. 

“He is old and all by himself and he is closest kin 
little Virginia have,” he said and went down stub- 
bornly to his boat. 

Madame Bigone could not believe the story her 
Monsieur told. 

“She was only play,” she cried. Wish to go to 
school ! When Monday come we will see if she wish, 
maybe. ’ ’ 

And that she might make sure of it Madame took 
her Albert by the hand and went herself to the 
schoolroom door. M. Lerot was there also, unhappy 
enough in his heart. Many mothers had placed 
their little ones in this teacher’s keeping, turned 
them over wistfully to her tender mercies but it 
seemed to the teacher that she had never seen such 


[ 13 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


anguish in any other eyes as she saw that morning 
in M. Lerot’s when he brought his baby to her desk. 

“She is going be good little girl,’^ he said, for- 
lornly. 

“I am sure she will be/^ the teacher assured cor- 
dially. 

“She is going do just like you say, going come 
when you say come, going sit when you say sit, ha, 
ma Bebe?’' 

‘ ‘ Mais oui, my Grandpa, ’ ’ Virginia said in French 
and then in English she told the teacher : 

“My name is Virginia Cleve. I was five years old 
last month.” This was just as her mother had 
taught her to say it and the teacher who had been 
struggling with broken English, French idioms and 
non-comprehension warmed with all her heart to this 
smart little girl who spoke both tongues so well. 

“I shall let your little girl sit by me eind help me 
with my French,” she said pleasantly to M. Lerot, 
“I am sure we shall be great friends. She seems to 
be smart.” 

‘ ‘ Oh she is smart, yes m ^am ! Dere is not any ot ’er 
little girl in world so smart like my Virginia is; ha, 
ma Bebe ? ” 

Virginia said: 

“Mais oui, my Grandpa,” and stood complacently 
while M. Lerot took off her white bonnet and 
smoothed her tumbled ringlets with his slender 
’Cajan hand all curved as it was to the clutch of pole 
and paddle. 

“And she is going be good little girl.” 


[ 14 ] 


THE GARDEN 


“lam sure she is. You will come for her at three 
o’clock?’^ 

“At free o’clock. Yes, m’am. I will be at door 
when free o’clock come. I wish you good morning, 
Madame. Also I wish you good luck wit’ school.” 
So Monsieur bowed himself out doing his bravest to 
please the teacher who, if displeased, might beat his 
baby. And Madame Bigone saw it all. 

‘ ‘ C ’est vrai, ’ ’ she said briefly to her Monsieur, ‘ ‘ he 
has start Virginia to school. But is she going keep 
on go?” Madame shrugged her shoulders, and she 
promised herself: 

“My Albert shall watch if she go every day. I 
shall ask him every night when he come home.” 

Albert did not have to be questioned. His talking 
was always about Virginia, how she could spell, how 
slie could march. Albert, indeed, had fallen frankly 
in love with his pretty little cousin and before the 
week was out had hidden his own book that he might 
study with Virginia in hers. The teacher smiled: 

“I wonder if ’Cajan boys begin to have sweet- 
hearts before they put off their baby clothes!” 

Madame Bigone did not smile. 

“K Albert was going to marry Virginia there was 
all the more reason why the little girl should be 
brought into her house to be raised as a girl should 
be raised and taught to do all manner of womanly 
work. And yet knowing this to be so needful, and 
with all her worldly wisdom called in counsel, Ma- 
dame Bigone could And no further pretext for taking 
Virginia from under M. Lerofs care. 

[ 15 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘Hf I should go see Madame Croisant, maybe, 
she thought. She and Madame Croisant had grown 
up as girl’s together and her friend’s tender heart 
had sometimes found a way when Madame ’s own 
shrewd head had failed. But the grinding season 
had begun and M. Bigone was a knife on the planta- 
tion. While the grinding season lasts knives do 
not go visiting and neither do their Mesdames. 

‘‘When grinding season close,” Madame said and 
waited. 

The season did not close that year until the first 
week in January; but as soon as it did close Madame 
went across the Island to make her visit, and as 
soon as she returned from that visit she took her 
Monsieur eagerly aside. 

“Cher,” she said, “when I was across Island Ma- 
dame Croisant showed me Virginia’s little place. 
It is not much place, God knows. It is little, yes! 
But if M. Lerot does not pay tax on it, place will go 
to Parish. And it should not go to Parish — it will 
be dot for Virginia when she is married. I wish you 
to go to M. Lerot and say to him as I have say to 
you — Place should not go to Parish. And you will 
say to him also, if he does not wish to pay tax, Voila, 
it is you will pay tax, and you will take Virginia to 
live in your house.” 

But between M. Bigone ’s eyes and his Madame ’s 
eager face rose the picture framed in the shade of 
the shack, the pleasantness of it, the pathos : 

“I reckon, me, Pierre will pay tax on Virginia’s 
little place. Seem like he sets heap of store by her. ’ ’ 

[ 16 ] 


THE GARDEN 


‘‘He will pay if he can, yes,*' Madame agreed. 
“But how he can? How much money he make wit’ 
his fish, ha? And all time he buy dress for Virginia, 
buy shoes, buy book, buy pencil, buy dolly, buy 
somet ’ing all time ! How it is he is going pay tax ? 
Va, cher, and say to M. Lerot: ‘Ah, it is already Vir- 
ginia should be in my house?’ And if she is going 
have little place for dot it will be help for Albert. 
It is right by Madame Croisant’s place and she say 
to me, ‘Yes, it is good land.’ Va, cher. Va vite!” 

M. Bigone went again across False river, going 
even more unwillingly than he had gone last time. 
His Madame was a wise woman; and yet, if he 
should pay the tax for old Pierre, would she be 
smart enough to find it out? 

“She has mighty fine head,” he said uneasily, 
“fine head, sho.” To M. Lerot he said what all men 
in Pointe Coupee say in greeting to another man on 
a rainy day in J anuary : 

“Bad days for levees.” 

M. Lerot gave assent. He was planting a new 
shrub in his garden, a sweet olive and dreaming of 
the delight his baby would take in its fragrance 
when it should bloom; for in all the fiowers of the 
garden there is no fragrance so fine as the scent of 
the sweet olive. Monsieur had been working all the 
morning that he might receive this plant in pay ; but 
he paused only to press a little more earth about its 
roots and then said courteously: 

“You will walk in house?” 


[ 17 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


M. Bigone walked in, heavier than ever now be- 
cause his heart was so unhappy : 

“I hear me, dey have crevasse yonder at Grand 
Bank,^’ he said. 

“Sho,^’ said M. Lerot, “Well, water will pass in 
Bayou LeBlanc.” 

“And if dike go, it will pass in False river. 

“Dike will not go,’’ M. Lerot replied with cer- 
tainty. ‘ ‘ ’T was M. Davee build dike yonder. He 
is young man but” — 

‘ ‘ Sho, ’ ’ said M. Bigone. He knew well enough the 
name the young engineer had made for himself 
among the men of the Island. There was nothing 
more to say and so he said: 

“Virginia’s papa have little place on ot’er side of 
Island. Close by Madame Croisant, is where place 
is. My Madame say if you do not pay tax on it, 
place will go to Parish. She say it should not go 
to Parish — it will be dot for Virginia. ” He stopped 
and saw the anxious light shine in M. Lerot ’s eyes. 
Together they turned and sat over the fire. M. 
Lerot could not make even the passing comment 
politeness required. Pay tax on her little place? 
And there was but a single dollar left of the candle 
money he had saved to pay for the masses that would 
pray his soul out of purgatory when he died. 

M. Bigone was silent also : 

“He has not money to pay tax, but he shall not 
give up his baby no. If my Madame find out or if 
she does not find out I will pay tax for him. ’ ’ 

“Eh bien, Pierre, if you have not money to pay 


[ 18 ] 


THE GAEDEN 


tax,” M. Bigone begun bravely, “I will pay and” — 

M. Lerot started up with quick suspicion, seeing 
the hand of Madame Bigone at work: 

“Non, non!” he declined hastily, “I will pay tax. 
Say to your Madame, Virginia’s little place shall 
not go to parish. I will pay tax. Say to her it is 
tomorrow I will pay!” 

M. Bigone got up and went to the door: 

“Bad day for levee,” he said, “And it is going 
be bad night. Bad night, sho. I wish to know if M. 
Davee will hold levee yonder. I pass in road yester- 
day, ’t is plenty nigger he have and plenty mule 
also. But if he will hold her” — 

M. Lerot did not know when his guest left him. 
Sitting over the fire, seeing but the single dollar of 
his candle money: 

“While I live I will keep ma Bebe. When I die, 
devil can have me if he wish.” 

Yes, certainly he would take that last dollar. But 
it would not be enough. How much money would it 
take to pay the tax? Monsieur did not know. He 
had never paid a tax but he had heard men talk of 
taxes and they had always spoken unhappily, saying : 

“It’s the levees that makes the taxes so high. 
Five dollars ? If it was only a little place maybe five 
dollars would be enough. But how was he to get 
the five dollars? The other four? By catching fish. 
It was the only way that M. Lerot had ever made 
money. But he could not catch four dollars’ worth 
of fish out of False river between noon and night? 
Not in January, certainly, when for weeks the 


[ 19 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


weather had been wet. How then? Monsieur re- 
membered Bayou Le Blanc. He had just said that 
the water coming through the crevasse at Grand 
Bank would make its way into that bayou and he 
knew that where the water of the Mississippi went 
the big, blue Mississippi cats went also. Standing 
on the dike across the mouth of Bayou Le Blanc he 
could easily catch four dollars’ worth of fish, — and 
he could sell them? Yes, he could sell them on the 
levee where Davis the engineer had so many negroes 
to be fed. By the time he had finished thinkiug it 
all out M. Lerot was on top of the dike with his har- 
poon and lines. On his right, a dozen feet below, 
the waters of False river softly lapped the base of 
the dike, blue and very tender even on that dismal 
day. On his left within a foot of him pressed the 
water of Le Blanc, sullen, silent as the Mississippi’s 
own. If the dike should give way now while Mon- 
sieur stood fishing there with only a dollar left to buy 
masses for his soul? In Pointe Coupee men do not 
ask such idle questions. With the sullen water swel- 
liug higher and higher they drive along the road on 
top of the dike and whistle as they drive. M. Lerot, 
knowing just how to do it, soon caught all the fish 
he could carry and with their big heads against his 
shoulder and their forked tails tapping his heels 
strode steadily away to the levee with its threatened 
crevasse and hungry hands. 

Had there been a high wagon in the road with an 
up-ended sugar hogshead on its seat, Monsieur 
standing on the hogshead could have seen the River 


[ 20 ] 


THE GAEDEN 


flush with the crown of the levee. He knew this as 
he stood in the road but he was not thinking about 
it. With his eyes on the gang as they were at work 
strengthening the levee he was knowing the joy of 
a man who sees a market for the stuff he has to sell. 
Those lustly blacks who drove the scraper teams, 
the broad-backed bucks between the barrow handles: 

‘ ^ ’T is plenty catfish nigger can eat ! ’ ’ He 
watched them for a minute in approval. Team be- 
hind team the scraper gang worked like a well 
oiled machine ; each pair of mules in its turn wrung 
wither for the cut, bowed backs to the climb and 
when the scraper swung over dumping its load of 
dirt, each team with lifted heads circled down to cut 
and climb again. And so with the barrow gang. 
Every man keeping step in line ran his barrow up 
the plank to the crown — 

‘^Mais, mon Dieu! uttered M. Lerot, “Dirt yonder 
should be put in sack. M. Davee’’ — he began to 
look about him anxiously, forgetting his fish. Where 
was the Boss! 

On the crown of the levee stood a white man, 
heavily-booted, mud-covered, keen of eye. It was 
the man Monsieur was looking for. Wearing, but 
all unconscious of it, a stout stick in his boot-leg; 
wearing, but also unconscious of it, the marks of 
night-watches upon his gaunt, unshaven face, the 
stamp of exhaustion upon his sunken shoulders. In 
the drip of that cold, all-day drizzle the Boss stood 
watching the work and the River. There are square 
miles of cane that a crevasse here would wipe out 


[ 21 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


in a week, and hundreds of happy homes and fair 
gardens have laid the weight of their care upon his 
shoulders ; and there are men who ride, spurring for 
news — If they are ruined as the world knows the 
word; there are women who sit waiting, wistful- 
eyed; and these things too were upon the Boss’ 
shoulders. But he, standing there unconscious of 
the burden that was bending the brave back of him 
even as he was unconscious of mud and of danger, 
was thinking only of sacks. Sacks that should have 
been there and were not there. Sacks, sacks! He 
nodded to M. Lerot and said not unkindly: 

‘‘Want to sell that truck? Take it to the cook.” 

But M. Lerot had forgotten the fish, the four dol- 
lars, the tax that must be paid. His eyes were anx- 
ious. 

“Excusez moi, M. Davee, if you please. Today it 
drizzle, tonight it will rain. You should have nigger 
put dirt in sack.” 

“Got no sacks.” 

“You have no sacks. Monsieur?” 

“They put them off over yonder.” 

“Put them off on ot^er side!” That such a cargo, 
precious beyond any price in this hour of danger 
should have gone astray! Yet it was not to be won- 
dered at. When the River is high, landing at weak 
levees is forbidden; there is confusion. Steamboat 
captains have to do the best they can and not in- 
frequently do their worst. 

“They’ll get them across tomorrow I guess,” the 
Boss said dryly. His heart was breaking over the 

[ 22 ] 


THE GARDEN 


maddening delay, but a Boss may not show his heart- 
ache. Monsieur turned away : 

‘‘Tomorrow, Monsieur,’’ he began. His courteous 
bearing broke, his eyes got bright. He had turned 
from the Boss toward the River and now stood fac- 
ing her — in all her hideousness, in all her pitiless 
power. 

“What about tomorrow?” 

Tomorrow would be too late, but M. Lerot did 
not say so. The River going by had brought him 
memory, the smell of her mud, and madness. M. 
Lerot said: 

“Ha, ’t is me will fetch sack now. ’T is plenty 
mean t’ing River has do to me and you t’ink I will 
not beat her when I have chance to beat? Ha” — 
and seeing his girl again in her sweet young beauty 
going down with that caving bank he fell to cursing 
deep-toned, ’Cajan oaths that the Boss could not 
have understood had he been listening. 

If he could get the sacks now — only a few hours 
before night, before the heavy rain began. If he 
could get all this loose dirt shoveled into sacks so it 
could not be washed away. He followed the old 
man who was going muttering along the levee to 
that stronger point where a skiff lay moored; and 
as he went the temptation was strong upon the Boss. 
One chance in a thousand, but then it was only one 
withering old life risked to save the prosperity of 
a parish. Possibly the old man had heard of the 
hundred dollars he had offered that morning to the 
man who should bring the sacks across. Every 


[ 23 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


darkey in the gangs had declined it with a respect- 
ful: 

^‘No, t’ank you sir, Boss. When I dies I wants 
to die on dry land.^’ 

^‘But/’ the Boss reflected, “a hundred dollars 
would seem untold wealth to a ’Cajan.” And hav- 
ing reached the skiff that M. Lerot had begun to 
cast loose, the Boss put his hand down flrmly and 
said: 

‘‘See here ! You canT go across that River. Look 
at her.^’ 

M. Lerot lifted his eyes from the knot he was 
untying. Above and beyond her bank, stretching 
from levee to levee, tawny-colored, catlike, cruel, 
the River swept to sea without a murmur. And as 
he looked upon her with hatred a gleam from a part- 
ing cloud lit her cold face as it were with exulting 
wickedness : 

“Yes,’’ Monsieur said in slow bitterness of utter- 
ance, “Make your smile like sin but it is me will 
fetch sack. Ha, you t’ink it is plenty garden you 
wiU get tonight, plenty pig, plenty people, but it is 
me will fetch sack.” He took seat in the skiff, not 
seeing the Boss or heeding his protest, not knowing, 
indeed, that he was there. Weather-beaten, though 
he was, worn by life and the ways of it, with his 
white hair and his weight of years, M. Lerot yet put 
his boat’s nose to the stream with a skill that made 
the Boss square his jaws against a quick rush of 
hope. That river-bred old ’Cajan who knew his 
Mississippi as he knew his cabin floor might be able 

[ 24 ] 


THE GAEDEN 


to do what none of those big blacks could be bribed 
to try. 

And yet, how could any man get across ! 

Drifts of uprooted trees swept down with the cur- 
rent, wreckage of roofs, swelled cattle sucked back 
through the crevasse above, barrels, and broken 
homes. The Boss strained his eyes to follow, and 
after the rafts and after the roofs there was yet the 
frail boat stealing steadily. Monsieur had forced 
his way upstream to a point far above the landing 
opposite that he meant to reach. Now he turned 
into the stream and with all his weight on the down- 
stream oar let the current carry him down on a 
diagonal course, his madness pitted cunningly 
against the River’s malice and her might. The boss 
stood silent, staring, his hand clenched in his pock- 
ets, his feet apart. The gangs, lusty-lunged, good- 
humored, made careless comment on the crisis: 

^^He ain’t gwine git across dat River, no, sur!” 

‘^What you talkin’ ’bout, nigger? Dat’s old crazy 
Pair Layro.” 

^‘Pierre Lerot,” the Boss caught the name to re- 
member it as men remember sounds heard in an hour 
of anguish. But he did not know then that he heard 
it. Even if the empty boat should get across, 
what chance that it could recross loaded — driven 
as it would be by failing muscle and failing breath ? 
— How white the old man’s hair had been, how hol- 
low his temples. The sky grew more gloomy as the 
unseen sun sank to its setting : a mutter came down 
the wind telling of the time there was to be that 

[ 25 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


night. Rain and wind. Always rain and wind at 
night when the River is high and the levees are 
weak. The Boss had planned this fight as a young 
general plans his first great battle : picked men 
worked with the barrow down there; picked mules 
walked in the collars; the latest improvements in 
scrapers; a big supply of food in camp — and no 
sacks ! 

He was to be defeated by another man’s stupidity 
as many a brave man has been beaten before. But 
the Boss did not say this. Bitterly, broadly he 
blamed himself that he had not brought the sacks 
by wagon instead of ordering them by boat. The 
hours of dimming daylight went slowly, the tired 
teams dropped their ears, the tired men ceased to 
sing, and the River went on rising, lipping higher 
and higher at the water mark, smiling, as it were in 
mockery of this man-made mound. So the Boss 
stood with his eyes on the swift, foul fiood and out 
of the wreck and ruin there peered at him the cold 
glances of ruined men. He raised his head to meet 
those eyes, squarely, as a man must meet the eyes 
of other men be his failure ever so damnable in their 
sight; and, doing it, met yet other eyes — the eyes 
of a girl, sweet, brown eyes where disappointment 
deepened. He had lost his first big levee. His very 
first. The Boss began to feel the weight of the 
stick in his boot-leg, the load of the mud on his boots, 
his shoulders sagged heavily as he turned his eyes 
away. ‘ 

“Fo God, Boss. Look yonder!” 

[ 26 ] 


THE GARDEN 


Lord, what a load!’’ 

Sacks! Sacks enough to swamp a boa! Sacks 
enough to save a levee! Fresh as a boy from his 
bed the Boss gave eager order; with the ready re- 
sponse of their race, fagged hand and fresh hand 
flung themselves into the flght ; and M. Lerot panting 
on the verge of victory let his breath go in hoarse, 
wild laughter, mocking in hate and hoarded ven- 
geance the River he had beaten. But through all the 
stir and taunting the River went, smiling softly, 
upon her wide and wicked way. M. Lerot was clear 
of her current but between her shore and his loaded 
boat was an eddy, new-made since morning. The 
River knew and then M. Lerot knew it also. With 
the levee only a few feet away the nose of the heavy 
boat was caught in the eddy’s noose and Monsieur 
and his saving sacks went circling slowly outward 
toward the stream of never ending raft and roof. 
Let M. Lerot bend his old back so madly as he might, 
let him strain the muscles of his heaving chest, the 
breath he had flung away in that foolish laugh was 
gone. The River would play with him like the cat 
she was and then carrying him down mocking in 
malice at the vengeance he had planned. M. Lerot 
sunk his blades deep and prayed, knowing well 
enough in his madness what god to pray to and what 
pledge to offer upon that god ’s altar. 

''Oh, Wind,” he prayed, "Oh, Wind, blow wit’ me 
now and you may blow away all I have in world.” 

And the wind with a great guffaw came out of 
the farther west, sent a shiver through the River, 

[ 27 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


set a shoulder to the boat. There would be wild 
work tonight, black rain and battle : the wind 
laughed as it lent that hand. But then, other hands 
were lent also. First the hand of a determined white 
man swimming to the edge of the eddy making fast 
a hawser to that reeling boat and after it, hands 
black and brawny that pulled on the rope like horse- 
power. 

The Boss thrust money upon M. Lerot, the Blacks 
lifted him and set him aside. Sacks were what they 
wanted and sacks were what they had. The Boss 
had not had his boots off for twenty-four hours, 
would not have them off for twenty more to come. 
The sacks were filled with dirt and stacked along the 
levee’s crown, the stacks rising faster than even the 
River rose. Haste, fierce anguish of impatience and 
a vision: — Through the rush of rain and action, a 
woman’s waiting face — 

“If I could only get word to her that I have the 
sacks!” 

M. Lerot left alone upon its slope stumbled down 
the levee to the road. Going home as a dog goes, 
rain-beaten, blown upon, weak from his frenzy, — so 
Monsieur fared on with the night. 

“My Grandpa, my Grandpa.” 

Monsieur’s stumbling steps swung into a stride, 
his voice sang out in cheer : 

‘ ‘ Reste tranquile, ma Bebe. Y our grandpa is come ’ 
to you.” He fondled her in the firelight, the little 
girl that had been forgotten and left lonesome in 
the dark; and fondling her found the money in his 

[ 28 ] 


THE GARDEN 


hand. Virginia counted the shining new .bills 
There were ten of them. 

‘ ^ T is money to pay tax, ma Bebe, ’ ’ he said. 
‘‘Plenty money your Grandpa has get for you.^’ He 
laughed, and the little girl laughed also, hugging 
him tight, exulting to have him home again: 

“My Grandpa is big man,’’ she crowed. So they 
nestled in the firelight, very happy, while the wind 
wandered about the world willing enough it seemed 
to wait for the prize that had been pledged. 


[ 29 ] 


CHAPTER II 

The Wind 

With wild bright eyes and an air of reckless glee, 
the red-headed boy walked up to the teacher’s desk. 

“I am come to school, me,” he said. 

“What is your name?” asked the teacher, follow- 
ing the formula. 

“Le Vent.” 

“Le vent — ^your name ! Le Vent means the wind.” 
She spoke with certainty, for little Virginia had 
coached her carefully in ’Cajan French. “Your 
name cannot be The Wind.” 

The new boy received her protest politely — just 
smiling; and the teacher remembered that it is not 
for any sane being to say what may or may not be 
a ’Cajan boy’s name. She called Virginia to her and 
questioned : 

“Doesn’t Le Vent mean The Wind?” 

“Yes, m’am.” M. Lerot’s baby, very dainty in 
her nice new clothes, very demure in the dignity of 
her seven years, gave the answer with reassuring 
serenity. The teacher questioned more boldly: 

“Did you ever hear of a boy being called The 
Wind?” 

Virginia quoted her highest authority: 

“Albert calls him Le Vent.” 

The red-headed boy cut in with gay derision : 

[ 30 ] 


THE WIND 


“Albert Bigone? Tete-bleu! He’s fool, yes. I got 
name in church, but Albert don’t know. He is fool”- — 

Virginia shut him up with sharp English : 

“Albert is not a fool. He knows plenty more than 
you know. He has been coming to school for two 
years, and you! This is the very first day you have 
come to school.” 

Le Vent looked delighted upon the rage he had 
roused : 

“Where you get your pretty eye, ha?” 

“Here, be still, both of you. Virginia, you may go 
to your seat. Now. Do you know what the name is 
that you have in church?” 

Le Vent, looking after Virginia in heedless glee, 
gave over the milder joy of plaguing the teacher: 

“Yes, I know. It is Frangois — Frangois Creve- 
cour. ’ ’ And without waiting for the further formula — 

“I got t’irteen years, me.” 

The teacher made the entries and Le Vent had been 
enrolled in the Island school to be indeed as a wind 
in it; distracting the studious quiet with his careless 
commotions; laying waste its fertile fields of learn- 
ing; stripping the leaves from its stately trees of 
knowledge. The whole school suffered, but it was 
Virginia who came in for the Wind’s worst plaguing. 
To tease her until her big eyes flashed was the crown- 
ing joy of Frangois ’s impish day. Albert Bigone 
defended her. He was not only Virginia’s cousin, 
but her lover also. And so it happened that when 
Madame Croisant came on her next visit, she found 


[ 31 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Madame Bigone grim and skeptical as they battled 
the wash at the water’s edge. 

^‘School,” she said, taking up a polite question of 
Madame Croisant’s. “School. Ma foi, it is trouble 
school is. All time it is fight on road, get whip by 
teacher. Fight on road some more; get whip by 
teacher some more. And what good it do?” 

Madame Croisant set her head sideways, consider- 
ing the question — and the ink on a shirt. 

“Child will learn to read in book, maybe?” she 
suggested. 

“Read in book!” Madame Bigone repeated pas- 
sionately. “Read in book! And what good it do? 
When I was in world, Madame I was wit’ she read 
in book, read plenty, yes. ’T is all time she is read. 
One day she cry and say to me : 

“ ‘Ah, Marie, I feel so sorry for dese poor people!’ 

“I say to her, me: 

“ ‘Dey is kin wit’ you, Madame? Dose poor 
people ? ’ 

“And she say: 

“ ‘Oh, mais non. Dey is only play people.’ 

“Me, I don’t say not’ing but I t’ink somet’ing, 
yes. Ma foi! ’T is plenty people in world woman 
can cry for wit ’out cry for play people. And I t’ink 
aussi, if Madame was not read in book so much maybe 
it is she would not have to pay me so much money 
to mind baby for her — to mend dress for her. But 
no! When woman learn to read in book, look like 
she get wind in head. She blow here, she blow dere ; 
she will not work. Look little Virginia yonder. ’T is 


[ 32 ] 


THE WIND 


already she can read in book. She is big friend wit^ 
my Albert, but me, I am not proud for it, no. When 
woman can read in book, you reckon she is going work 
in garden?” 

Madame Croisant looked across False river in quick 
alarm. There in the shade of the shack she saw some- 
thing that might have been a little girl reading a 
book, and her ^Cajan heart felt fear. A life that 
passes idly as the wind passes can bring forth only 
waste places. Madame Croisant knew that even as 
she knew her religion : 

“Mais, M. Lerot,” she cried, ^‘M. Lerot should 
make Virginia work.” 

Madame Bigone answered drily out of her worldly- 
wisdom: 

‘‘Make her? Ain’t he old and all by himself in 
shack? What it is he going wish to make Virginia 
do? Voila. It is love him like he was her grandpa — 
vrai ! ’ ’ 

Madame Croisant was thinking of that cabin near 
her own, and of the small farm where the American 
teacher had tried so hard to make a living ’Cajan 
fashion for his ’Cajan wife. Tried, and failed, and 
died, leaving his wife and little daughter to make 
a living for themselves. 

“Virginia’s papa work — and he read in book. And 
her mamma also could read in book, but she work — 
work plenty.” 

Madame Bigone shrugged her shoulder and shifted 
her argument : 

“Mais oui, American blood will work some; ’Cajan 
[ 33 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 

blood will work plenty; but when you mix American 
wit’ ’Cajan, you get lazy blood, — it will not work, 
no!” 

“But Virginia must work, she shall not be lazy. 
’T is plenty I love Virginia Cleve and you t’ink I will 
sit and see old man spoil her little girl. I shall go 
to him, I shall say to him if he does not wish little 
girl to be like wind is he must give little girl her 
job and he must make her do job!” And being 
nervous and thin and not at all sure of her courage, 
Madame Croisant dried her hands, pulled down her 
skirts and cried : 

“You will lend me pirogue, if you please. It is 
now I will go ! It is now I will say !” 

Only two years since he had turned the sod, already 
the flowers were growing tall in the garden M. Lerot 
had promised to make for his baby. Madame Croisant 
waiting among them wondered at the way the flowers 
had grown. Yet the wide yellow eyes of the jonquils 
were wistful as with long wishing: 

“And what it is you wish?” 

Ah, but was not Madame wishing it also — that the 
mother were here to watch over her baby girl ? 

The roses, blood-red beside the door reproved her. 
So long had she been in coming. So long — ^nearly two 
years. 

Timid as she was about intruding upon another’s 
house and home, Madame could not linger long in that 
wistfulness of wishing and waiting. She moved on 
around the shack and so came upon M. Lerot milking 
the goat. 


[ 34 ] 


THE WIND 


Monsieur got up from his knees; gave Madame 
courtly greeting and invited politely: 

‘‘You will walk in house, if you please?’’ 

Madame walked into the house, glancing about 
eagerly for some saving sign of childish strength tip- 
toeing to its task. But the cover lay smoothly upon 
the bed, the chair sat straight against the wall and 
the floor showed no skipped places in its sweeping. 
Did this old man in his pride and devotion require 
nothing indeed of his baby? Nothing but play and 
the idle reading of books? Madame Croisant could 
not believe it. She did not know of the prayer Mon- 
sieur had made to the wind, nor of the pledge he had 
given it. There is work, she thought, in both garden 
and yard that a little girl could be trusted to do more 
safely than the more costly care of a house. She took 
the chair M. Lerot set forth and said kindly : 

“I wished to see how your little Virginia was com- 
ing on. Her mamma and me, we were great friends ! ” 

M. Lerot thought at once of Madame Bigone. First 
it had been the school, then the tax. What pretext 
had she plotted now for taking his baby away from 
him? He asked anxiously: 

“And how you t’ink she is look’, Madame? Ma 
B6b6?” 

The tone and the light in his eyes touched Madame ’s 
tender heart. She remembered that Monsieur had 
planted cowpeas. She would not have wounded him 
for any gift of gold. She cried cordially: 

“How I t’ink she is look’? Tudieu, Monsieur! I 
t’ink she is look’ flne. ’T is how everybody must t’ink 


[ 35 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


who look at /ler/^ she drew the little girl to her knee: 

“It is great care your Grandpa take wit^ you, is it 
not, BebeT’ 

Virginia left her hand in Madame Croisant’s, and 
answered gently in French : 

“Mais oui, Madame/’ 

“Mais oui,” Madame echoed encouragingly. “He 
give you nice dress and pretty dolly, he make you 
garden, he milk goat for you, he plant cowpea. ’T is 
plenty he do ! And what it is you do all day, ah, ma 
Bebe?” 

Virginia answered this nice little Madame nicely: 

“I go to school,” she said. 

‘ ‘ C ’est bien, ’ ’ Madame encouraged some more. 
“And when you come from school, petite, what it is 
you do, ah?” 

“I make my dolly go to school,” she warmed to the 
nice Madame and began to tell eagerly: 

“I make my dolly go to school. I make her say 
‘A’; I make her march” — ^she stopped. Her Grand- 
pa was listening in delight, but the nice Madame was 
shaking a sorrowful head: 

“Non, non, ma Bebe. When little girl come from 
school she should run quick to help her Grandpa wit’ 
work in garden; run quick to pick up stick to cook 
supper; run quick to pull grass for goat; run quick 
to fetch broom to sweep house” — 

Virginia’s large eyes were getting larger and larger 
as Madame rushed on with this appalling catalogue 
of virtues. M. Lerot hastily interposed : 


[ 36 ] 


THE WIND 


‘‘Mais, Madame! Virginia is only little girl. Ah, 
ma Bebe ? ^ ^ 

Virginia assented with sweet relief: 

“Mais oui, my Grandpa.’’ 

Madame Croisant shook the more sorrowful head: 

“Monsieur, Virginia is only little girl like you say, 
but she is not too little to help you wit’ work. I 
know plenty little girl who pick up stick to start fire, 
and pull grass in garden, and mind baby for mamma. 
You should make her help you. Monsieur. If she 
does not learn to clean house when she is little girl, 
when she grows to be woman she will not know how 
to clean house. And to sweep yard, to scrub house, 
to keep everyt’ing clean, — it is for why le bon Dieu 
has made woman, Monsier.” 

With gentle dignity, little Virginia freed her hand 
from Madame ’s clasps and walked out the back door 
cuddling her dolly. Madame Croisant looked after 
her unhappily: 

“Monsieur,” she said earnestly, “it is better for 
little girl to be lying dead in grave dan to be grow- 
ing up in garden, doing not’ing. If you wish me to 
take her in my house”* — 

M. Lerot started in his chair. This was what 
Madame Bigone was up to now : 

“Madame,” he cut in with decision, “I t’ank you, 
no! It is plenty t’ing Virginia do. She go to school, 
she read in book, she make dress for her dolly — ’t is 
fine how she can sew” — 

But Madame could only shake her head more and 
more sorrowfully as that list lengthened: 

[ 37 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘‘To do what one wish to do, Monsieur, is not to 
work. Wind will blow as it wish to blow. It is so 
Bible say: ‘Le vent souffle ou il veut.^ Do you wish 
Virginia to grow to be like le vent?’’ — 

“Le Vent!” M. Lerot sprang up in passion, tall 
for all he was so stooped. He towered above Madame 
Croisant, his eyes blazing, his voice deep with rage: 

“Le vent! Francois Crevecour. Nom de Dieu! 
You would name ma Bebe wit’ him% Mechant! 
Chaud-tete” — 

“Mais, Monsieur,” Madame cried, too scared to 
know what she was saying, “Francois is not chaud- 
tete, he is white” — 

“He is wild, he is bad! Le Vent? Mais oui, he is 
Le Vent! And you would name ma Bebe” — 

“Oh, Monsieur, I did not mean — I know your baby 
is good little girl. I know she is smart — pretty” — 

But Monsieur had no more courtesy for her speak- 
ing. With burning eyes and pointing hand, he stood 
in attitude of dismissal, and Madame Croisant 
with bowed head went out to meet again the jonquils’ 
wistful eyes: 

“Already,” she sobbed to the flowers. “Already 
wind is in his garden. And when he And wind is 
here, what it is he will do? What it is he can do? 
God knows! God knows!” She went away, very 
unhappy in her heart, bearing with her a fear of 
M. Lerot that was to shut her away from the little 
girl whose mother she had loved: 

How tall the old Monsieur had looked in his anger, 
how terrible! 


[ 38 ] 


THE WIND 


Monsieur’s anger, being ’Cajan rage, passed as 
swiftly as it had come, leaving him weak and wretched 
in the presence of his fresh alarms. It was Madame 
Bigone who had sent this friend of hers to his shack : 

“All time she is try to take ma Bebe from me.” 
He was so shaken that the words were as a sob in his 
throat ; but he was still a ’Cajan, and while there was 
a breath left in that bent old body of his. Monsieur 
would fight for his own. He went out to the shade 
where his little girl sat at play: 

“Ma Beb6,” he said wistfully, “you would wish 
now to pick some stick to make fire ? ’ ’ 

Virginia, dancing her dolly, answered sweetly: 

“Mais non, my Grandpa.” 

“You would not wish?” How pretty she was! 
But then, if he was to keep her she must learn to 
work. “You would not wish? But you would wish 
to pull grass for goat, maybe?” 

Virginia had no doubt about it : 

“Mai non, my Grandpa!” 

“You would not wish,” he said unhappily. “But, 
ma Bebe, it is so — Madame say good little girl should 
do.” 

Virginia dropped the dolly, her lip quivered: 

“You think I am not a good little girl, my Grand- 
pa?” 

M. Lerot went down on his knees: 

“Mais oui, ma Bebe. I know you are good little 
girl. In all de world dere is not any ot’er little girl 
so good like my little girl is.” 


[ 39 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Virginia sobbed out her unhappiness in the hollow 
of his throat: 

‘‘It will make my hand dirty to pull grass, it will 
make my dress dirty. I do not wish to be dirty like 
Mathilde is. Albert say she is slick like mud so dirty 
she is.” 

“And you shall not be dirty, ma Bebe. Your 
Grandpa wish you to keep your hand clean and your 
dress clean. It makes him proud to see his Bebe clean 
all time. Look star yonder. Come, say pretty words 
for your Grandpa. ’ ’ 

The little girl turned her big wet eyes up to the 
first faint star as she did every evening to please him 
and said prettily : 

“Des etoiles me parlent a esperance; me parlent 
a Dieu.” 

But when his baby was in bed and Monsieur had 
gone to the edge of the batture where the garden he 
had made stooped to kiss the garden his God had 
given him. Monsieur stared up at the stars and the 
stars stared down at Monsieur and spoke to him 
neither of heaven nor of hope: 

“Dose Mesdames,” the old man said, “all time dey 
wish to take ma Bebe. And dey shall not take. When 
she say to me again: 

“ ‘Your little Virginia work, ahT 

‘ ‘ I will say to her : 

“ ‘Mais oui, Madame! Ma Bebe work plenty.^ 

“But if ma Bebe does not wish to get her hands 
dirty she shall not get her hands dirty. ’T is heap 
I can lie if I wish to lie. While I live I will live; 

[ 40 ] 


THE WIND 


when I die, devil can have me if he wish. T ’ank God, 
it is on ot’er side of False river Madame Bigone live! 
And I will watch out. All time I will watch out.’’ 

And when Monsieur had made an end of 
his vowing, he heard the voice of one walking in his 
garden and knew of it how it was an uneasy voice 
that would now be always there breathing a cold 
breath upon its sweetness, shaking its repose; yet he 
did not know that it was the voice of the Wind. 


[ 41 ] 


CHAPTER III 


The Wind in the Garden 

M. Lerot watched out — ^while his garden grew in 
beauty even as his baby grew. Whenever he went 
across the Island to collect the rent for Virginia’s 
little place and met Madame Croisant at her gate, 
timid, yet full of eager inquiry, M. Lerot had his 
answer ready. Indeed, his baby was ‘Moing fine.” 
Growing to be a great girl, busy always with work 
about the house and yard, a great help to him, a 
comfort, a crowning joy. 

Madame Croisant eagerly retold all this to Madame 
Bigone and Madame Bigone received it without gain- 
saying. Not so much because she believed as because 
she was bothered about something Le Vent had fiung 
at her one day after she had driven him indignantly 
from her water-melon patch: 

“C’est bien, Madame. You t’ink I would not rat’er 
have little green book M. Lerot have in pocket dan 
every big green melon you have in patch, ha? Your 
Albert t’ink he is going get little green book for him- 
self, but, me, I know who it is going get book, yes ! ’ ’ 

Now Madame Bigone knew what a little green book 
meant. The sugar-planter’s wife had kept such a 
book in a top drawer, and had told her to be careful 
of it, as it meant money in bank. But that old man 
Lerot should have money in bank, Madame Bigone 


[ 42 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


could not at first believe. She knew nothing at all 
about the hundred dollars Monsieur had won by that 
fight with the River, but she knew to a nickle how 
much rent he received for Virginia’s small farm. It 
was not much, but if he hoarded every cent of it? 

^Ht would be somet’ing, yes.” 

Did he save it? The bank was in Bouge Vache and 
Le Vent’s father spent most of his time in Bouge 
Vache shooting craps with the roustabouts at the 
landing. Le Vent might have learned about the green 
book from his father ,* and then, again, Le Vent might 
be lying. 

The only way in which Madame might get at the 
truth of it was to watch Le Vent himself — if he was 
in earnest about being Albert’s rival for Virginia’s 
favor. Madame watched Le Vent, watched him 
through Albert’s eyes, watched him with her own; 
and the longer she watched, the more uneasy she 
grew. It was not only because he wasted where he 
would not work that the Island had nicknamed 
Francois Crevecour as it had ; but also because, like 
the Wind, he had a trick of taking boldly whatever 
he chose to take. 

And if in his headlong, handsome way he made up 
his mind to marry Virginia, what would she do? 
Madame knew moments of intolerable uneasiness; 

‘‘When a girl have some ’Cajan, some American, 
what she will do, God knows!” But year by year 
it became to Madame more apparent that even Vir- 
ginia’s American blood would not hesitate in making 
choice between the wild beauty of the Wind and her 


[ 43 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


own splendid son. And at last quite sure of herself 
and of her worldly wisdom she answered Madame 
Croisant’s incredible accounts of Virginia, saying: 

‘‘All money M. Lerot get for rent he put in bank 
to be dot for Virginia.’^ 

They were sitting in the crowd that had gathered 
for the closing exercises of the school, a crowd that 
leaned and looked to see Virginia crowned queen of 
May. 

Before Madame Croisant could give whisper in 
return for whisper. Monsieur Bigone spoke in his 
slow, heavy way: 

“And today make nine year.’’ 

“Nine years,” Madame Croisant repeated softly. 

For a moment Madame Bigone forgot the little 
green book and Francois Crevecour’s boast. Just nine 
years since they three had gone down into the tangled 
places of M. Lerot ’s garden seeking what they should 
find, and, having found, had borne it home, white, 
and still in the bottom of their boat. 

But for a moment only might Madame forget it. 
Albert and Frangois were both paying court to the 
new-crowned queen and which one would carry her 
away from the crowd? Albert, who knew not of the 
green book, or Frangois who did? Madame, watch- 
ing, began to smile; then she put her hand on the 
knee of the dreaming Madame Croisant: 

“Look my big brown boy yonder!” 

Albert was rather masterfully leading Virginia 
away, following the curving bank. Had he not always 
pointed the path that she should follow^ — ever since 


[ 44 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


they were little folk in the primary grade together? 
Madame felt sure of the answer. She said to her 
friend : 

‘‘I reckon, me, Virginia know who her old man is 
going be. ’ ' And she added with complaisance : 

Before, I have never hear of girl on Island who 
have money in bank for dot.^^ 

Virginia knew, certainly, why she had been brought 
to this sheltered bend and seated on this soft green 
bank, and why Albert was standing near her awkward 
and dumb; and her French blood rose gallantly to 
meet the nervous moment. 

“Look,’’ she laughed merrily and pointed to 
Albert’s reflection in the clear water, “Look how tall 
you grow when you stand on your head.” 

Albert was a stanch fellow and held stubbornly to 
his purpose. 

“How you like to be queen, ha?” 

“Oh, je suis enchantee! I find it nice.” 

“You would like to be queen all time maybe?” 

“And wear crown like this on my head?” 

This was not the kind of queenhood Albert had 
meant to offer. Looking down on her pretty head, 
loving her, longing for her, he set himself manfully 
to make his meaning clear. 

“Non,” he explained tenderly, “not to wear crown 
on head, Virginia. Madame could not wear crown, 
it would fall off when she work.” 

“Work,” Virginia said, and with the word came 
the picture that she always saw at the sound of that 
word — a red-faced woman with straggling hair. 


[ 46 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


sweating, barefooted, her legs streaked with dirty 
water; her skirts drawn to the knees, yet draggled 
from scrubbing. Having never worked, Virginia 
knew nothing of the joy of making things clean — 
nothing of the inner glow only work may give. All 
she knew about work was the repulsive aspect of its 
outer grime, and she answered Albert with indigna- 
tion and disgust: 

‘‘Work! You think I would work?” 

“But yes,” Albert said, seeing no reason for her 
disdain. According to Albert’s teaching, work was 
a man ’s main object in life and a woman ’s also. ‘ ‘ But 
yes, you would work if you were Madame — wit’ house 
to keep clean, and garden”: — 

Virginia cut in with composure: 

“Never!” 

“Jamais?” Albert repeated. He began to expostu- 
late, using the tone he had used so many times to turn 
her wilfulness into the way that it should go : 

“All Mesdames on Island work,” he said, “ ’T is 
so a Madame must do — ^bake, scrub, clean garden.” 

At each enumeration, Virginia recalled a memory 
of them, those hard-working ’Cajan Mesdames of the 
Island who have such sweet clean houses and such 
gay sweet gardens. They stood forth at Albert’s 
words, — flushed, drabbled, dank and acrid. 

‘ ‘ I would not do it, ’ ’ she said, ‘ ‘ I would not be like 
that for anything.” 

Albert stood staring down at her, astounded. 

“You would not — work,” he said slowly. “Mais 
who would scrub house if Madame did not. — And 


[ 46 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


where would I get bread if my Madame did not bake 
it for me?’’ 

Virginia laughed gaily as she had so often laughed 
at the dear old boy’s stupidity: 

“I don’t know,” she said. 

But this time Albert did not laugh to her laughing. 

“You should know, Virginia,” he returned earn- 
estly. “You should t’ink. You reckon any man on 
Island would wish to make marry wit’ girl who would 
not make bread for him? Me, I would not wish to 
make marry” — But here Albert got red in the face 
and looked so wretched that Virginia asked demurely : 

‘ ‘ And with whom it is you would not wish to make 
marry, Albert?” 

Albert got redder yet and more awkward, but stood 
solidly upon the stand he had taken. Comfort, order, 
contentment could come to man and woman only 
through work well done. Albert knew that, even as 
Madame Croisant knew it, as every ’Cajan Monsieur or 
Madame must know it, and he told Virginia so, say- 
ing simply and most unhappily: 

“I could not make marry wit’ girl who would not 
bake bread for me.” 

Virginia shrugged deliciously. For nine years she 
had tempted and teased his devotion, but never 
reached the end of it. 

“Eh bien, M. Albert. Pretty soon you will be a 
man, and it is for a man to say with whom he will 
make marry — ’T is not for — somebody.” 

But Albert had not withdrawn that far. He was 


[ 47 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


still certain that there was only one girl that he could 
marry. He denied emphatically. 

“Non. It is not for man to say wit^ who he will 
make marry.’’ 

Virginia’s glance went up to him in sweet surprise: 

“It is not for man to say? Then for whom is it?” 

Albert told her soberly: 

‘ ‘ It is for girl to say. ’ ’ 

“Girl!” Virginia laughed merrily at the ridiculous 
notion. ‘ ‘ Girl ! A girl cannot say anything. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ She can say somet ’ing, ’ ’ Albert insisted seriously. 
“She can say yes, maybe. She can say non — Man 
cannot make marry wit’ girl if she say non to him.” 

Virginia disposed lightly of this difficulty: 

“But if a man does not wish for a girl to say ‘non’ 
to him he should not let her do it. A girl will say as 
a man says if the man will only say loud enough. 
Pas vrai?” 

And now, as it always did, that rolling “r” drew 
Albert closer to the girl he loved : 

“Ah, she has just been play’ wit’ me,” he said, 
impatient at his own denseness. He smiled tenderly 
and submitted: 

“So you t’ink if I should say loud and plenty to 
you, girl must work if she wish to be a woman, if 
I should say it t’ousand times, you would say it also? 
Voila, cherie”r — 

But all Virginia’s ugly images were up again at the 
word, shutting her from the eagerness and tenderness 
of her lover’s eyes: 

“No, I would not say it. Not if you should say 
[ 48 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


it ten thousand times. Work is dirty and I will not 
do it.^’ 

“ ^T is dirty, yes,” Albert agreed, then he argued. 
*‘Mais man must work if he wish to have. And look 
how it is, Virginia. Man work, he get somet’ing, he 
go wash and, voiht ! He is clean and he have. ’ ’ 

Virginia looked down at the water, and its reflec- 
tion. Heretofore she had seen Albert in clean clothes 
only, the clothing of the school and the church. Now, 
by the light of his own words she saw him as she had 
seen other laboring men — with mud-covered boots, 
clinging shirt, dead-tired, dirty and dull. 

Her playfulness fell away from her as she sat look- 
ing at that image in the water. 

“I should think,” she said slowly, “I should think 
a man could make a living without getting dirty — my 
Grandpa can.” 

But Albert had thought of an illustration that 
would make all things clear to this little girl that he 
loved. He set it forth eagerly: 

‘‘You t’ink, m^amie, man can have if he does not 
get dirty — some. You are girl — ^you do not know? 
Mais void M. Davee yonder. Smartest man in Pointe 
Coupee ! ’T is plenty times he has beat River. When 
everybody is say’, ’Levee gone!’ M. Davee he stand 
dere in mud. He does not sit down to eat; he does 
not lie down to sleep. He fight, fight. It is dirty he 
gets, God knows. But he win!” Albert rested his 
case triumphantly; for, indeed, whatever Davis, the 
civil engineer, did, every other man should be glad 
and proud to do. 


[ 49 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


Virginia had her own hero and a case of her own 
in evidence. 

“My Grandpa does not get dirty,” she said, “and 
it is plenty he has. Prettiest garden, cleanest 
house” — 

Albert interrupted: 

“He clean house himself, your Grandpa!” 

Virginia had never taken thought of this. The 
house was always clean, and she had never questioned 
who cleaned it. 

Albert demanded sternly: 

“You let him — old man like he is — ^you let him 
scrub floor? Well, me, I am sishamed for you. 
Shamed, yes.” 

“Shamed, ha? And it is so you would talk to 
queen? Well, me, I am shamed for you! Shamed, 
yes.” There was no indignation in the reproof, only 
laughter, mocking, merry, wind-shaken as it were 
with careless glee. Albert could have taken Le Vent 
down and beaten him for his intrusion, but how can 
a man make war with the wind? Le Vent leaned over 
Virginia and raised her to her feet : 

“Ah, ma reine,” he sighed as he led her away, “I 
am sorry for you, sorry, yes. When smart man like 
Albert get shame — C’est terrible, oui! And for why 
he should be so shamed, maybe?” 

Virginia had no thought of conflding in the Wind. 
She set his comforting lightly aside: 

“Oh, well,” she said, “Albert can be silly some- 
times. * ’ 

“Oh, mais oui,” Francois agreed, “he can be silly 

[ 50 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


sometime, he can be fool without much trouble. Any 
man can be fool, it is easy to be fool.’^ 

‘‘But for M. Francois, it is easy to be smart?” 

“Oh, mais oui. It is easy for me to be smart. I 
have head like my papa.” 

“And your papa has fine head, maybe?” 

“But, yes! Tete-bleu, you do not know. Not any 
man on Island has head so fine like my papa have. 
Look ot’er men go sweat in sun, go dig wit’ hoe, go 
dig wit’ spade. My papa does not dig, he does not 
sweat. Ot’er men go plant cowpea and pick cowpea 
and sell cowpea to make money — and it is little money, 
yes. My papa does not plant and he does not pick, 
but it is plenty money he make.” 

Virginia gave over her mocking and began to listen. 
She was right then. A man could make a living with- 
out getting dirty. She looked, interested, into Le 
Vent’s eyes and noted what a bright brown they 
were and how little red fiecks like fire jumped about 
in them while he talked. 

“And you t’ink I will be fool and go sweat in sun 
like my mamma say? Ecoutez, Virginia!” And Le 
Vent leaned nearer. “I have some money, my mamma 
does not know. I have skinned dead cow, I have 
skinned alligator. Tomorrow I am going buy me fast 
horse and go ride into Bogue Vache like my papa 
ride. And I am going make money wit ’out work like 
my papa does. And you, why you cannot go wit’ me ? 
You have money also?” 

“No,” Virginia denied indifferently. “I haven’t 
any money.” 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Francois smiled at her simplicitly: 

Maybe, but you have little green book.” 

“Yes,” Virginia assented absently. She was 
thinking of Albert and his argument. “Yes, I have a 
little green book.” 

“And we will go live in Bogue Vache. If my papa 
can live without working, you and me, we can live 
also. ’ ^ 

Virginia answered out of her thinking: 

“And my grandpa, he does not work.” 

“Your grandpa? Oh, I reckon he work when you 
go abroad — I have see him when I pass. Voila, ma 
reine. I will come to gate wit’ fast horse. We will 
go to priest, we will live yonder in Bogue Vache, we 
will sing, we will laugh” — 

But Virginia was looking past him with troubled 
eyes. Wast it true that her Grandfather worked while 
she was away from home? Worked, as she had seen 
the women on the Island work — and the men also? 


[ 62 ] 


CHAPTER IV 


The Weeping by the Water 

‘‘Frangois Crevecour! He can lie plenty, yes,” 
Madame Bigone said deeply, ‘‘but it is not me will 
believe his lie, no!” 

“No?” Madame Croisant repeated with sympathy. 
She had not an idea what it was all about, but Madame 
Bigone was wounded and Madame was her friend. 
It was the morning after the Maypole and a Saint’s 
day. The two Mesdames were washing the dishes in 
a hurry that they might have time to dress for church. 

“Little green book,” Madame explained with 
wrath, “it was one of his lie”r — 

“Mais non!” 

“Mais oui. How I know! Voil^! Is it not hun- 
dred times I have say to you when ’Cajan blood is 
mixed wit’ American blood it make lazy blood? Is 
it not hundred times I have say it?” 

Madame Croisant, polishing a plate, considered it: 

“It is plenty times, yes.” 

“Plenty time, God knows!” Madame Bigone 
caught up the admission eagerly. She had been 
duped, but not by Madame Croisant. It was the 
Wind that had played with her and out of her full 
heart Madame began — not to tell it, but to talk: 

“And what I say, is it not true? Look Virginia 
yonder. She has been big friend wit’ my Albert. 


[ 53 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Me, I was not proud for it. Mais boy should make 
marry where he love, and it is not for any mamma to 
say where boy is going love. I could not say anyt’ing, 
me, but I could watch. — You see how I was watch yes- 
terday? I watched Albert go wit’ Virginia, I watch 
him come tout-seul. I watch him leave crowd and 
go home. I said to myself: 

“ ‘My God, I wish to know what it is he is going 
do?’ 

‘ ‘ I come home, I find Albert in field working like he 
is crazy. I say to myself: 

“ ‘Pretty soon he will be hungry and come to house, 
and I know.’ But Albert does not come to supper. 
I wait in kitchen till it is dark; till his papa has go 
to sleep. I go to his door and say easy : 

“ ‘Mon garQon?’ 

“And he say: 

“ ‘Me voici, mamma.’ 

“ I go in, I sit by him. Albert ? Long time he does 
not say anyt’ing, but me I keep sit in dark by him. 
And when I have been sit plenty by him, Albert say 
to me, slow like: 

“ ‘Mais, mamma, man should not make marry wit’ 
girl who will not work. How he can have house? 
How he can have garden? Man should not make 
marry wit’ girl who will not bake bread for him.’ 

‘ ‘ I say to him : 

“ ‘But no, he should not.’ And I tell him, me: 

“ ‘Man would be crazy to make marry wit’ girl 
who would not bake bread for him. Where he would 
get his bread, maybe?’ 


[ 54 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 

‘‘Albert raise upon his elbow and he say slow some 
more: 

“ ‘Mamma, work is not dirty fing?’ 

“I tell him: 

“ ‘Mon fils, le bon Dieu work when he make world. 
It is so father say.’ 

“Albert does not say anything, just stay rest’ on 
his elbow, look’ out t ’rough door at stars shine in sky, 
so I ask him, me, how it is he know Virginia would 
no bake bread for him, and he answer he like he is 
sick: 

‘ ‘ ‘ She tell it me. She say work is dirty, she would 
not do it for anyt’ing in world. And she say her 
grandpa he does not get dirty and he have every- 
t’ing man should have — clean garden, clean house. 
Mamma, can man have if he does not work?’ 

“I tell him: ‘Non, non, man cannot.’ And I t’ink 
quick : 

“It is lie Le Vent has been tell. If old man Lerot 
has been pay nigger woman to wash his clothes, to 
scrub his house, it is not any money he have in bank, 
no. And I make my swear to God, Albert shall not 
play fool for Frangois Crevecour to laugh. I say 
to him: 

“ ‘Mon fils, voila Mathilde. For why you do not 
go wit’ her to church tomorrow? I know me it is not 
any ot’er girl on Island work like Mathilde work. 
It is clean garden and clean house and plenty good 
bread you would have. For why you should wish to 
walk wit’ girl when only t’ing she can do is school 
and sew?’ ” 


[ 65 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


‘‘School and sew,” Madame Croisant cried un- 
happily. “But m’amie, it is plenty M. Lerot has 
teU”— 

“It is plenty he has lie. Look Virginians finger, how 
white it is. If she had money in bank, c’est bien. 
But if she has not money in bank, man would be fool 
to make marry wit’ her.’’ 

“But if she love Albert, n’ Madame Croisant cried, 
conscience-stricken and distressed, “if she love Albert 
and if he love her? Ah, I will go to her and show 
her how it is. Girl should be proud to work for boy 
when she love him. She does not know, she is 
young” — 

“Young ?nn Madame Bigone denied it indignantly. 
“She is most fifteen. When I was old as she is, it is 
free monf I had been married.” 

“Ah,” Madame Croisant begged, “I will go to her, 
I will talk, I will tell her how it is wit^ her mamma. 
Soon as we come from church I will go to her. Je 
vous prie, do not send Albert to Mathilde today.” 

Madame Bigone kept silent. Albert was already 
leaving the house in his nicest clothes. Whether he 
were going to Mathilde or not, how was she to know ? 

Virginia knew. Alone in a boat together she had 
seen Albert and Mathilde skirt the hyacinths and 
pass on toward the church. Her cheeks were hot and 
her eyes burning as she stood there alone in her 
garden. It was a beautiful garden: under the roses 
grew beds of violets, now mats of dark blue sweetness, 
and the edges of the beds were fringed with richest 
green — narcissus and jonquils. A spike of white 


[ 56 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 


flowers or a bunch of bright yellow lingered here and 
there to star the fringes with their beauty. A little 
garden, but so very lovely. There were no cabbages 
in it, no onions. Nothing but fair flowers and deli- 
cate odors. M. Lerot had worked many a moonlight 
night for the sake of hearing his darling’s cry of 
delight when she should wake next morning; worked 
many a schoolday in the grounds of the big plantations 
for pay in cutting and bulbs, and perhaps a rooted 
shrub, — thinking nothing of the hours that bent his 
old back to the sun, caring nothing for the miles he 
trudged, only that in all Pointe Coupee there might 
be found no other garden so rich as his baby’s garden, 
no blooms more beautiful, no plant more rare. And 
how he had been paid for it with kisses and love and 
sweet words of wonder. The japonica that she had 
watched so joyously while her grandfather coaxed it 
into glossy green was just now putting on its crown 
of crimson; but though Virginia stood staring at it, 
she was not seeing it. The air about her sank yearn- 
ing with the fragrance of the sweet olive and the 
rose. Virginia’s nostrils quivered, but not with de- 
light in the delicate odors. Albert was by now walk- 
ing into church with Mathilde. And all the Mesdames 
were lifting their brows, and the young girls looking 
to see where Virginia was — all smiling discreet smiles. 
And the Messieurs. — There would be no Messieurs at 
church to check the laugh. They would be taking 
advantage of the holiday to go out to the River and 
ask M. Davis if the dike was going to hold. The late 
rise was on, the River very high, but everybody knew 


[ 57 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


the dike would hold, M. Davis had said it would. The 
Messieurs, Virginia thought resentfully, just wanted 
an excuse to go out there and talk to M. Davis. He 
was on the dike himself because it was a threatened 
point and because — Virginia did not know what other 
reasons the civil engineer had for being on the dike. 
She knew that Albert, her Albert was sitting in the 
church with Mathilde while everybody smiled and 
wondered. M. Lerot had gone fishing, so Virginia 
was alone in this garden of hers that was so sweetly 
plotted and set together. She had plenty of time to 
think, but what could she think ? Last night after she 
had said her words to the star she had lingered 
here and thought of Albert, and wondered if one 
could not work without getting so dirty as the 
Mesdames got. The only women she knew who were 
always clean were the wives of the planters who had 
negro women to cook and clean and care for them. 
These women were always clean with white hands 
and fair, cool faces like fiowers. But then, it seemed 
to Virginia, there might be something more worth 
while than white hands. — Albert — she had always 
loved him. No other boy’s hand ever felt as his hand 
felt when it clasped hers, large and warm and yet so 
gentle; no other boy’s eyes ever looked as his eyes 
looked when they met hers in the deep, glad greet- 
ing — and he was sitting in church with Mathilde. The 
girl they used to laugh together about because she 
got so dirty — that trick he had of throwing his head 
up and laughing straight out from his heart! And 
yet to think of Albert’s laughter now was to think 


[ 68 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 


of other laughter, intolerable to hear. She who had 
reigned a queen yesterday with her tinsel crown, who 
had always been petted and bowed to, the class leader 
at school, the teacher’s friend — how could she bear 
to be laughed at now, because her best boy friend had 
got mad and thrown her over for another girl? And 
they would laugh! 

Like an echo to her shamed and startled thought 
laughter came leaping to Virginia through her garden, 
wind-shaken, reckless, the laughter of Le Vent: 

‘‘Eh bien, ma reine! You have been watching bird 
build nest in bush yonder. For why you should stand 
look so much? You do not know for why you stand 
stare plenty? Maybe it is boat you have been watch. 
You do not know what it is you going do to fool 
yonder? But, me, I know. You are going go wit’ me 
like I say to you yesterday. Voila, my fast horse 
is at gate and, me, I am on knees to you!” 

Indeed Le Vent was smart enough as he had 
boasted. His time was chosen shrewdly. Flushed 
with his first luck at craps he was kneeling among her 
pretty flowers, radiant as a sun-shot breeze; Albert 
stood afar off holding Mathilde’s hand, and Virginia 
was all alone in this her first moment of stung and 
startled womanhood. 

“We must hurry, ma reine, before your Grandpa 
come. You will give me my answer now.” Francois 
had told his life-plan over and over again, painting 
a life of ease for her, pleading. And now as the boat 
came back around the bend he begged an answer. 

Virginia gave it to him, watching the boat where 


[ 59 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


brown hands held fast together, hearing the mocking, 
and seeing the smiles. Having given her answer, 
Virginia’s eyes went back to the bright red blossoms 
of the japonica, but they seemed dead enough; — the 
world was empty, and the sky. 

As Madame Croisant climbed the batture into M. 
Lerot’s garden she saw that a buggy was just being 
driven from his gate. The horse was checked a 
moment at her approach and Virginia leaned out to 
say: 

“Madame, if you please, you will tell my Grandpa 
when he comes that I have gone to the priest with 
Francois. ” 

“Wit’ Frangois — wit’ Le Vent? Ah, mais non, 
mais non. Virginia!” The cry ricochetted from the 
shack, the voice of it broke with anguish ; but Frangois 
was willing to risk neither the bride nor the green 
book he had won to any Madame ’s crying. He 
whipped up his fast horse and Madame Croisant was 
left, making her passionate protest to drumming hoof 
and whirling wheel. And being so left alone Madame 
wrung her thin hands in wretchedness: 

“It shall not be,” she cried to the hyacinth; but 
the hycacinths just foaming into full bloom could 
only toss their purpling heads for cheer. “It shall 
not be,” she cried to the flowers, but the roses drooped 
and the jonquils stared. 

“When M. Lerot come he will go to priest, he will 
tell his Virginia is too young to make marry. Ah, 
if he would only hurry, if he would only hurry I ’ ’ 

M. Lerot was getting old. He no longer walked 


[ 60 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 


briskly, yet as he came stepping proudly with the 
fine fish he had caught for his baby’s dinner, his pace 
was swift enough, had not Madame been so impatient. 
For one thing. Monsieur was late. It was nearly 
twelve by the sun now; he must hurry or his baby 
would be hungry. For another thing — 

‘ ‘ Madame Croisant ! ’ ’ Monsieur lost thought of his 
lateness, of his duty to go and see M. Davis on the 
dike. ‘‘Madame Croisant! And she t’ink she wiU 
come get ma Bebe some more.” It was a growl and 
a snarl; yet when Madame, hastening to meet him, 
came near enough for speech. Monsieur gave it in 
courtly form, and he invited: 

“You will walk in house? Me, I will tell Virginia 
who is here.” 

“Mais non. Monsieur. Me, I t’ank you, mais — 
mais non, Virginia? She is not here!” 

“She is not here? It is, she go to church. She say 
to me she did not t’ink she would go to church today.” 

“She did not go to church. Monsieur. Ah, Mon- 
sieur. She tell me say to you she has gone to priest 
wit’ — Francois!” 

“Wit’ Francois?” Monsieur questioned. He did 
not understand. 

“She has gone to priest wit’ him. Monsieur. If 
we hurry, if we hurry, we can go talk wit’ fat’er. We 
can say to him she is too young. Virginia, ah she 
should not make marry wit’ Frangois!” 

“Wit’ Francois?” 

“Wit’ Le Vent, Monsieur. She has gone wit’ Le 
Vent.” 


[ 61 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


“Wit’ Le Vent! Ma Bebe! Gone wit’ Le Vent!” 
Then Monsieur remembered, the blaze went out of his 
eyes, his shoulder dropped, he turned about like the 
aged man that he was and sat down on the steps of 
the shack. And with him was the River, wide and 
turbid, the loaded boat on the ripple of the eddy and 
his own voice raised in prayer — pledging all he had 
in the world to the wind for its aid in this, his hour 
of vengeance. 

“Monsieur,” Madame cried, “we must make hurry. 
FranQois is going quick wit’ fast horse. Maybe it is 
he is going to Bouge Vache, we must hurry. Monsieur. 
We must hurry.” 

M. Lerot sat looking down at the string he held. 
The fine fish on it gasped now and then fiirted a dying 
tail. 

“Monsieur,” Madame begged. “Do not take it so 
hard. Virginia did not t’ink. She love you plenty. 
Monsieur. She love you heap. She is young, she did 
not t’ink — ah, it was like dis. Monsieur” — and Ma- 
dame drawing near began trying to tell the wretched 
truth as she had all pityingly pieced it together: 

“Virginia, she did not wish to work”- — 

M. Lerot raised his head and put his lie aside: 

“Virginia did not work, Madame.” 

“Ah, Monsieur, it was so, I know. It was so, I 
know.” 

Their eyes met and there was confession. Between 
them they had let a life grow up in idleness — what 
if they had loved it? What if they would have 


[ 62 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 


cherished it? The wind had swept the idle thing 
away. 

Monsieur was the first to move, stretching a hand 
to lay the string of fish down carefully in the shade 
of the rosebush: 

‘ ‘ ’T is nice string of fish I catch, ’ ’ he said gently, 
^‘mais, ma Bebe will not eat fish soup wit^ me some 
more. ’ ^ 

“Oh, Monsieur,” Madame cried and turned away 
from the eyes that looked out to her so dry and bright 
above the thin, wan misery of the old man’s lips. 
“0, Monsieur, we must not let her go wit’ Le Vent. 
We”— 

M. Lerot interrupted her, reminding patiently: 

“ ^T is so I have prayed, Madame.” 

“But, Monsieur, you do not wish for Virginia to 
make marry wit’ Frangois Crovecour. You would 
be”— 

“Crazy” was what Madame was going to say. She 
did not say it. 

Recalling Madame Bigone’s contention she stood 
uncertain, hesitating: 

“Was it only for the River that M. Lerot was 
crazy ? ’ ’ 

Into the silence came the warning of a bell, drop- 
ing heavily. It was the plantation gong calling the 
laborers back to their labor. The protestant planter 
does not make holiday on Saints’ days. It was one 
o’clock; more than an hour since the fast horse had 
been driven from the gate. If there had been no 
objections raised to their marriage, Virginia was 


[ 63 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 

Francois’ wife. But perhaps there had been objec- 
tions — perhaps the priest himself would refuse be- 
cause Virginia was so young. Madame Croisant in 
the tenderness of her heart would have cheered Mon- 
sieur with this hope. 

“Maybe it is she will come back pretty soon, Mon- 
sieur. I will make you some fish soup and some coffee. 
If she come she will be hungry from her ride.” 

Monsieur made no answer, save a meaningless mut- 
ter about his prayer to the wind. He ate the soup she 
brought him as a hungry dog might have eaten it, 
drank deeply of the coffee, but Madame knew that 
he had no thought of what he did or of what she was 
saying. His old heart was broken and his brain was 
numb. She stayed by him through the anxious after- 
noon, watching over him, waiting; but at the end of 
it he turned from her, entered his house and shut the 
door. Pace down on his baby’s little white bed he 
pressed his lips into her pillow and the softness that 
had yielded to her sleepy smile bent beneath the 
writhing of his meaningless mutter: 

“ ’T is so I have prayed.” 

It was too late for Virginia to come now. Madame 
went down to her waiting boat. Too late, too late, 
the faint clear light fell over, far down the river the 
sunset shone ; sweetly the breath of the gardens came — 
faintly blown. Too late, too late. The hyacinths 
raised their purpling heads, dimly the east gave back 
the western glow — Madame Croisant bowed beside the 
water and wept, knowing that she wept in vain. 

And indeed Madame would have saved herself this 


[ 64 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 


long anguish of vain waiting had she but remembered 
it sooner: 

Never would a Roman Catholic priest refuse the 
rite of marriage to a boy and girl awing together on 
a warm young day in May. 

Out on the River, Davis walked the dike he meant 
to hold, guarding now for fear of cutting rather than 
from danger of crevasse. No gangs here to whistle 
and sing, no need of them. Nor any need of sacks. 
Broad of base, high and strong the big dike raised 
its walls between False river and the River. Sodded 
from foot to crown, impervious to sucking and 
to slough, the sides went down to the murky water 
and twenty feet below. Walking there in the peace 
and pleasantness with the day going out in beauty 
Davis took thought of his first fierce fight with the 
Mississippi — the old man’s daring deed, the wind and 
rain, the woman’s watching face — and then sharply 
he swung himself about and turned his face to the 
River and thought of other things. There was no 
longer a woman’s face watching for him. A woman 
must marry where she finds her mating. Davis gave 
his thoughts to the River like the civil engineer that 
he was; — that man should pit his uttermost against 
her year after year, and his victories so few, at their 
bravest so ephemeral. And the senseless waste ! Why 
could not that power be controlled and harnessed? 
That River out there who smiled her yellow smile at 
man and his petty efforts; who laid low his costly 
levees, lifted his land and carried it and strewed it 
upon the sweep of her wantoness, who cut and carved 

[ 65 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


her own wicked will, mocking at those who would 
use her for a highway, setting snares for them with 
eddy and snag and bar. Yet why could she not be 
bitted and made to work for man? She who swept 
away the springing crop with her evil smile, why 
could she not be made instead to grind man’s flour 
and cook his food? To warm and light and comfort 
him? 

“There is enough power going to waste out yonder 
to drive every boat on the River up-stream — if we 
could only get at it. To grind every ton of cane, to 
gin every bale of cotton in Louisiana — if we could 
only get at it. And some day we shall get at it, 
Madame Mississippi, and you shall become a slave — 
slave of the Lamp.” 

Davis smiled a little at the notion, and to his smil- 
ing the River gave back other smiling, cruel, as it 
were with thin malicious lips. Fifteen feet below the 
crown on which Davis stood and talked so bravely a 
crayflsh, a little thing no longer than a man’s finger 
had made its hole, very small, yet a hole that bit 
through the sod and went on and on into the heart 
of the dike. The River had set those thin lips of her 
to the mouth of that hole and was sucking softly. 
No man might know of her sucking, she made no 
sound, but ever since her first yellow ripple reached 
the edge of it she had been sucking at the cray-fish 
hole. All day there had been a trickle creeping 
through and blending with the blue water of False 
river. A tiny stream like a two-edged sword it cut 
up and down as it ran and the weight of the Missis- 

[ 66 ] 


THE WEEPING BY THE WATER 


sippi was upon the handle of that sword, cutting with 
it, swift and sure, a path for ruin. A trickle, so ran 
the story, a trickle and then a torrent of turbid water 
that rushed in evil glee through all the near reaches 
of Pointe Couple. 

^‘If it had not been for crayfish,’’ said M. Bigone. 
‘‘If it had not been for cray^sh, M. Davee would 
have saved everyt’ing and every garden in parish.” 

But when he said that M. Bigone had not yet 
learned about the fairest garden of them all — how it 
had been laid waste by the wind before the water 
reached it. 


[ 67 ] 


CHAPTER V 


Bogfue Vache 

Bare old parish of Pointe Couple with its golden 
sunshines, its night-black swamps and boding owls; 
with its bayous of beauty and fields of wealth, 
quaintly named and quaintly naming ! Its Bayou Sara 
is a town; its “Hermitage” is a steamboat landing; 
its Island is not an island; its teal duck is a fish. 
Well might its Bogue Vache be both town and land- 
ing, though the English for that be cow bog and the 
face of it be far from pleasant. Bogue Vache 
looked as though it had traveled a long way over 
bad roads and fallen down at last, demoralized by 
the mud of the way, to lie, unclean forever, by the 
side of the muddy River. The natives said its houses 
had not been painted since the slaves were freed; 
strangers said the houses had never been worth 
painting. Its one street, a muck in wet weather, a 
dust bed in dry, blundered along between unkempt 
front yards: — picket fences with pickets missing, 
sagging gates and slamming shutters. An unlovely, 
unloved place was Bogue Vache, yet a place of im- 
portance. Many people came there to take passage 
on boats, to buy and to sell. Thrifty people came to 
put their money in its bank ; reckless ones to waste 
their substance, and angry ones came to sue. Some 
came to be married, some to be buried, and pious 
people came to pray. 


[ 68 ] 


BOGUE VACHE 


It was to this Bogue Vache that the Wind came 
on that fair May Saint ’s day and brought his bride ; 
and the bride of the Wind so sheltered in her garden 
life looked about her with wide dark eyes that won- 
dered at what they saw. 

‘^It is a big house you have built for me/’ Vir- 
ginia said when Francois stopped his hot horse be- 
fore a two-story building that had neither garden 
nor gate : high, unhappy-looking and crazily put to- 
gether. The muddy steps of it came down to the 
mud of the way ; bottles and rags of paper lay dirtily 
about its doors ; sounds of loud talking and rattling 
of dice, smell of stale liquor and smoke came from 
its unsheltered door. A big, bad, hideous house! 

PranQois, mocking, made his Madame understand : 

Build house? Me, build house big like dis? Mon 
Dieu, it is rich man you t’ink I am? Voila, it is not 
in home we shall live; it is in hotel.” 

“Hotel!” The ’Cajan in Virginia cried in that 
low voice of horror, spoke in that wide stare of dis- 
may. 

Frangois resented both cry and stare : 

“Mais oui, hotel. Oui! You cannot live in home 
if you do not wish to work. To live in home is to 
sweep floor and scrub floor, to make bed and wash 
clot’es. To live in hotel is to have nigger woman 
do work for you. Allons!” He led her into a lit- 
tered room full of men, smoking and talking, and 
began to write something in a big book that lay on 
a desk while he joked with a man who stood behind 
it. The man looked at Virginia, some of the other 

[ 69 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


men stopped smoking to laugh ; some stopped talk- 
ing to stare, and she felt her face getting hot, her 
eyes getting frightened. All her life she had co- 
quetted with the boys of the gardens; but these 
men with stiff hats on the back of their heads, with 
bright pins in their ties and bright buttons in their 
cuffs, — these men who looked at her straight out 
of their eyes. — Virginia drew back, shrinking, and 
a man, who had been writing at the desk moved 
impatiently and put his shoulders between her face 
and those pitiless eyes. Virginia looked gratefully 
upon the shoulders that sheltered her, strong and 
straight and tired under their flannel shirt, looked 
gratefully also at the pistol butt thrusts into the 
hip pocket, at the corduroy trousers and muddy 
boots; before the man lifted his head and said in a 
sharp, stern way: 

‘‘Here! I need some volunteers to man a rescue 
boat.^^ 

Francois cut short his jesting with the clerk and 
led Virginia from the room, and as soon as they 
were alone she demanded: 

“Who was that man, Francois?” 

Francois laughed, leading up the stairs: 

“Oh, he is Albert’s smart man. He does not let 
levee break, no. Jamais! But he let little cray-fish 
make game of him. And now he t’ink he will put 
me in boat to go pick nigger from roof? Oh, he is 
smart man, M. Davee is.” 

“M. Davis!” 

Frangois shrugged at the exclamation: 

[ 70 ] 


BOGUE VACHE 


‘‘How you like your room? If you wish for some- 
thing, what it is you must do? Pull rope yonder, 
c^est tout. Pull rope, and nigger woman will come 
fetch you what you wish. Supper will be ready 
pretty soon. I will come for you when bell ring. 
Kiss me, ma reine.h’ 

He caught her to him rudely, carelessly as the 
wind catches, but Virginia, outraged, flung him in- 
dignantly aside. 

FranQois laughed merrily, bowing low to her at 
the door, mocking her angry mood. Having the 
book he could wait for the bride. 

Virginia turned to the window that looked across 
the street. In the clear late light she saw what 
there was to see: 

A littered yard where yellow children played 
while a black woman watched from the gallery and a 
white man smoked in the hammock, having seen this 
Virginia turned back sharply to the big bare room : 

“Oh, what was this place Francois had brought 
her to?” 

The smell of tobacco and beer came up through 
the floor, the sound of loud speech and careless pro- 
fanity rang unceasingly. She heard Francois ^ voice. 
He would be coming for her. Had he meant that 
she would have to eat supper with all those men. 

“I cannot do it. I cannot do it.” Then in the 
midst of her fear she remembered, and took her face 
from her hands to put her hair bravely in order. 

If all those other men were there he would be 
there too — that tired man in the muddy boots. 

[ 71 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


But Davis was not at supper. When Virginia 
shyly reached the table she found the men there talk- 
ing about him. It seemed he had gone away in a 
rescue boat to gather in the refugees from roofs and 
tree-tops. 

Francois thrust in a question: 

^‘He got his volunteer?’^ 

The drummers laughed: 

Don’t Davis always get what he’s after?” 

They began talking together in the detached way 
men talk of a disaster that does not touch them. 

‘‘Texas roads for mine this summer.” Virginia 
heard one say. A man near her assented: 

“This wiU wipe out every plantation on False 
river — and forty square miles beside. Credit gone 
rotten in a night.” 

Some one differed: 

“If Davis can close the crevasse” — 

He was cried down: 

“Close it! You should have gone with us, man, 
to see it. The water’s going through that dike like 
thunder. The thing will be cut clean out before 
Davis can make a mattress” — 

A lone speaker voiced his faith: 

“Davis is a pretty live man.” 

“Well, he isn’t the Lord God Almighty” — 

Virginia with white lips was whispering: 

“Oh, Francois. My Grandpa! My Grandpa! He 
is right on batture.” 

Francois was watching a mulatto girl who waited 
on the table. She was beautiful with the tropic 

[ 72 ] 


BOGUE VACHE 


beauty of blended races: “I know, me, she was not 
here last time I come,’’ he reflected. And to Vir- 
ginia he made careless answer : 

“Your Grandpa is all right. M. Davee will take 
care of him.” 

“You think so?” she asked anxiously. 

“Oh, mais oui, sure,” Francois said, trying to say 
it as he had heard the drummers say it. 

Virginia could not feel sure. That night she kept 
her first watch with anxiety and as she sat by the 
window she heard a voice saying: 

“And old man Pierre Lerot?” 

Was she sleeping, dreaming? Behind her through 
the silence came the sound of Francois’ heavy breath- 
ing, before her was the River wide and wicked under 
a waning moon. 

“And Pierre Lerot! What about Pierre Lerot!” 

No need to look down into the street. Virginia 
had recognized the voice in its quick impatience of 
utterance. Before Davis, a darkey stood hat in 
hand and scratched his kinky head: 

“Fo’, God, Boss. I swear I done look for him 
everjrwhar” — 

“Was his house under when you got there?” 

“Jest could see little pint. Boss. He live right on 
batture and didn’t have not’ing but shack. I reckon 
hit kinder kerlapse when water come rushing ’long 
dar and him sleep in his baid” — 

“Oh, shut up! A man that can cross the Missis- 
sippi in a loaded skiff when she ’s high — the way he 


[ 73 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


did out there at Le Gras — isn’t going to be drowned 
in his bed.” 

^‘Yessir, dat’s true, Boss. I swear fo’ God dat’s 
mighty true. But hit’s nigh on ten years since he 
cross Ribher.” 

‘‘You go again tomorrow and look for him. If 
you find him, bring him to me. Look everywhere.” 

“Yessir, Boss. All right sir. Boss. Hit’s like you 
say. I gwine go look for dat old man tomorrow. 
Gwine go look every whar in Pint Coupee” — 

They went into the hotel, the wide-awake white 
man, the sleepy darkey, leaving Virginia to face the 
remorse that peered at her, pallid and relentless as 
the River. 

“I will speak to Mr. Davis tomorrow. I will ask 
him.” And though the thought frightened her she 
clung to it. Frangois? Even if Frangois should go 
and come again she could not trust the news he 
brought. If it were true. “But I will ask Mr. 
Davis.” Before all those men, in the presence of 
that yellow girl, with Frangois laughing and joking, 
in all the startling, stunning surroundings of that 
horrible fable d’hote she would speak to this stern, 
muddy man and ask for news of the Grandfather 
she had forgotten in that hot hour of her mortifica- 
tion. 

Davis came in one door as Virginia came in the 
other and head up, white, and very sweet to look 
upon she crossed to him and said : 

“You have had news of my Grandpa?” 


[ 74 ] 


BOGUE VACHE 


^^Your grandfather?” The civil engineer stood 
at courteous pause — in his heart an aching impa- 
tience. Would they never be done asking him for 
news — of mother, wife, child ? In his eyes there 
was only deference and the desire to understand. 

‘‘My grandfather,” Virginia said, “is M. Pierre 
Lerot.” 

“Pierre Lerot,” repeated the tired man. “Pierre 
Lerot.” He glanced at the entering groups. “I 
should be able to give you news shortly after break- 
fast,” he said. “I will let you know.” 

After breakfast Davis knocked at Virginia’s door: 

“If you will step into the hall a moment, please?” 

“You have news of my Grandfather?” 

“About sundown last evening, shortly before the 
water from the crevasse came, Madame Croisant saw 
him go into his house and shut the door. He has not 
been seen since. I had a man out last night — I 
have been out myself since daybreak” — He put his 
hand out, offering dumb sympathy to the anguish in 
her eyes. 

“He was a brave man,” he said, “The bravest I 
ever knew.” 

Virginia drew her hand from his to cover her 
breaking face. 

“Was,” she sobbed, “Was” — 

«‘No — no. I shall send another man out today 
— I am sorry” — 

Davis shut the door softly upon her sobbing, the 
ache in his heart throbbed up to ache in his throat; 


[ 76 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


and going down stairs clumsily in his clodded boots, 
beaten and bruised, he swore under his breath, say- 
ing: 

“Damn the Mississippi river P’ 


[ 76 ] 


CHAPTER VI 


The Wind and His Bride 

Virginia was not ignorant. She had studied hard 
at school, had been, too, the companion and friend of 
a teacher with rich store of books to lend. Yet at 
her window in Bogue Vache she saw and heard many 
things that her studies had not prepared her to under- 
stand and found herself conning subjects that her 
absorbed readings in the sweet shade of the shack 
had not caused her to consider at all. That unkempt 
yard across the street! 

In the numb weariness that days of remorse and 
sorrow left to her, Virginia watched and wondered. 
Not that a red-headed darkey was unheard of. Vir- 
ginia had heard of them since childhood. In the 
gardens — even in the sweetest of them, Mesdames 
and Messieurs, and even young boys and girls some- 
times, spoke of the chaud-tete. But they spoke of it 
always as of an evil thing. Spoke of it indeed as of 
a thing of shame — done in danger of the law. And 
here in Bogue Vache, openly, in the light of such 
sunshine as shone there, the red-haired negroes played 
in the white man^s yard, the black woman rocked at 
ease on his gallery, and the law did — ^nothing? Per- 
haps there was no law in this dirty landing? 

Virginia brooded, lonely and sick at heart until even 
Francois in his carelessness noticed her steady guard 
at the window: 


[ 77 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘‘For why you watch little chaud-tete so much? 
You t’ink he is pretty, yes?’^ 

Virginia lifted eyes where indignation strove to 
flash a faint reflection of last year’s ready blaze: 

‘ ‘ I should think that white man would be afraid ? ’ ’ 
“Afraid?” Frangois uttered. And he asked as 
though suddenly interested: 

“For why he should be afraid?” 

“Why — afraid he would be sent to jail. It is so 
my Grandfather told me. It is against the law of 
Louisiana for a white man to marry” — 

“Oh — marry,” Francois said and laughed. “But 
yes ! It is against law for him to marry. Mais, tete- 
bleu, Virginia, M. Croix yonder is smartest lawyer in 
Bogue Vache. You t’ink he would be such fool as 
to marry? He say black woman is housekeeper for 
him. Tout le monde know yellow children is his chil- 
dren. But you t’ink anybody in Bogue Vache care 
for what color a man’s child is? Mais non. He can 
have red child, blue child, green child if he wish. It 
is for him to say. But, me, ’ ’ and for a moment Fran- 
cois ’ bright eyes grew wistful, “I should wish to have 
some children. Man is not man if he has not child.” 

Virginia looked away from him in swift, sickening 
distaste. Children? Little red-headed, fiery eyed, 
heedless, heartless! Virginia’s face grew cold. She 
and Frangois had not been married very long, but 
already she knew that one Wind was enough for all 
the world. 

“Children are a great deal of trouble,” she said 
coldly. 


[ 78 ] 


THE WIND AND HIS BRIDE 


Francois drew nearer: 

“I would pay nigger woman to keep care”- — 

Virginia interrupted, her tone cold and dreary: 

“And who would take care of the colored woman? 
The teacher talked to me about that once. She said 
her sister had a colored nurse and that she found it 
more trouble to take care of the nurse than it would 
have been to take care of the children.” 

FranQois left her, but was back again within the 
hour bringing a rose in his hand : 

“Voici, ma reine. You do not wish to be mamma, 
you wish to be queen? And, me, I shall keep my 
swear. You shall be queen. You shall wear rose in 
hair. Voila, rose! Put on pretty dress for dinner. 
If you wish for anything, pull rope and nigger woman 
will fetch it you. T is plenty t’ing I can pay nigger 
woman to do.” And he went out laughing as the 
wind laughs. 

Virginia looked at the closed door, but did not 
consider at all Prangois^ parting words. Had he 
really thought for one moment that she would be 
willing to be a mother to such children as his children 
would be? And as she repelled the thought of those 
wild-eyed, wanton ones there came crowding thoughts 
of other children, gentle, broad-shouldered boys, who 
climbed about her chair with laughter good to hear; 
also, thoughts of little girls busy in dear, little 
womanly ways, with lips that arched tenderly; and 
they too laughed as the boys did, lifting up their 
heads and laughing straight out from the heart, laugh- 
ing all of them just as Albert used to laugh when he 

[ 79 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


and she were little and played together in the garden. 

“I wonder if he and Mathilde are married yetT’ 
Virginia moved restlessly and looked down at the 
rose she held, a bud opening its creamy heart. Fran- 
cois with his fine French taste for beauty made no 
mistakes in the dressing of his queen. Though she 
might wear only mourning shades her blacks were of 
the softest, her white, the purest. He delighted to 
take Virginia on his arm and lead her down into the 
dingy dining-room to be the one bright forbidden star 
of it ; to put her in a buggy behind his fast horse and 
drive through the street of Bogue Vache and down 
the levee to the dike where work had been begun. 
In all Pointe Coupee there was not a woman more 
beautiful, not a girl more sweetly pure than his queen. 

Virginia shrank from the showing off, dreaded the 
dinners; but as she looked at the rose now and re- 
membered his words she felt sharp self-reproach : 

“If he is going to keep his word with me I should 
be willing to keep my word with him. And be a — 
queen.” The word mocked her, making heartless 
mirth at her sorry state, but she put the mocking 
aside and began to dress. She must keep her word. 

“And he has been so kind as he knows how to be.” 
She was thinking of the morning when he had come 
upon her in her grief. He had done all he knew how 
to do and had brought the priest to comfort her. And 
when she had wanted to draw money for the mass to 
be said for her grandfather ’s soul, Francois had gone 
with her to the bank, drawn out the money for her, 
known just how everything must be done. 


[ 80 ] 


CHAPTER VII 


The Boss 

The dreariness of overflow; the dullness of bank- 
rupt business; the smell of the Landing; mud; and 
always the River. So Virginia at her window watched 
the weeks go by. Sometimes there came up to her the 
sound of heavy boots that tramped impatiently ; some- 
times the sound of a voice, resolute above the cloutish 
clamor of the bar came up to her in clean-cut, emphatic 
utterance, in courteous speech, in the dry terse terms 
of pay-roll or planking. Davis, the Boss, was build- 
ing a new dike where the old one had been cut away 
and as she heard his coming and going, Virginia be- 
gan to understand his position among men: that it 
was somewhat inflexible. Standing generally in 
muddy boots, always under loaded shoulders, the Boss 
stood sternly for humanity and for high endeavor. 
Men, she gathered from the echo that she heard, men, 
even strangers, deferred to him, to the resolution in 
his eyes, to the purpose in his speech. So by sound 
and the echo of sound Virginia came to know the 
Boss; but when she went into the dining room for 
dinner one Sunday and saw a solidly set-up man in 
well cut clothes standing at a window with his back 
to the room she did not know who it was until Fran- 
gois led her across with a word of introduction. When 
the well-dressed gentleman turned with a quick-short 
bow and said, ‘‘Mrs. Crevecour’’ in the speech of her 
[ 81 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


father and with level r’s, she recognized the man who 
had moved to put his shoulders between her and 
those staring eyes — who, later, had tried to help her 
while she sobbed in the dimness of that hall upstairs. 

“Mr. Davis, she said, and put out her hand to him 
with quick pleasure. 

Davis took the small hand awkwardly enough. He 
was not a ladies’ man. And what could he say to 
her with the memory of their last meeting between 
them, and the eyes of the crowd looking on? 

Virginia’s French wit with its readiness covered his 
want of ease. As soon as Frangois had seated her 
beside the civil engineer she turned and said casually : 

“I have read a book about Mr. Jefferson Davis. 
Are you related to him?” 

Awkwardness dropped from the Boss: 

“Davis,” he repeated, “You have read a book about 
Jeff Davis?” And being only a blundering American 
without any French finesse at all, he let his astonish- 
ment show through. 

Virginia explained : 

“My teacher gave me the book. She was from 
Mississippi. She was proud of him.” 

‘ ‘ She should have been, ’ ’ the engineer told her, and 
his tone was the tone of a Mississippian who speaks of 
Jeff Davis. 

Virginia understood, it seemed easy to understand 
this strong man: 

“You are from Mississippi? And my father, he 
was from Mississippi also ! ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ He was ? And his name ? ’ ’ 


[ 82 ] 


THE BOSS 


‘ ‘ Cleve — Thomas Cleve. ’ ’ 

“Cleve?” Davis repeated thoughtfully. “ Cleve — 
He leaned a little toward her, his voice lowered: 

‘ ‘ They called him Tomas Clave around here ? ^ * 

“It is the French,” Virginia explained. 

‘ ‘ I understand, ’ ’ he said, and for a moment he said 
no more, recalling the story as he had heard it. A 
young fellow, little more than a boy, teaching to pay 
his way through a law school — and falling in love 
with the prettiest girl in his school and marrying her. 
Made a mixed marriage,” the engineer reflected im- 
patiently. But the Mississippian had stood by his 
guns. He had cherished the girl whose tender beauty 
had turned his head — had not dragged her away to 
be a stranger in his homeland, but had cherished her 
among her kind until malaria had claimed him. Davis 
put aside the gumbo he did not like and emphasized 
his distaste by laying his forearm on the table where 
the plate had been placed and leaning slightly for- 
ward. 

Virginia smiled impulsively at the action, remind- 
ing her as it did of the wilfullness of a spoiled child 
who was not going to eat what it did not want to eat, 
no matter who said it was good. It seemed funny in 
this stern man, funny and a little lovable. 

Davis, scarcely conscious of his action, followed 
out the line of thought to its conclusion and asked : 

“And your mother? She is living?” 

“Mamma was caught by water hyacinths and 
drowned” — 

^ ‘ Recently ? ^ ^ 


[ 83 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


‘‘Oh, no. I was only five or six years old at the 
time. ’ ’ 

Fatherless, motherless, married to a wild young 
gambler, exposed in her girlish beauty to the malice 
of this wretched landing! Davis sat silent until, 
toward the end of dinner, Virginia arose, asking: 

“You have read the book — about Jefferson Davis T’ 

“No; I don^t know that I have. What is it? His 
life?” 

“All about him, from the time he was a little school 
boy and got between his sister and the big deer — 
until he died.” 

‘ ‘ I should like to read it. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I would be glad to lend it to you. I have it in my 
room. ’ ^ 

‘ ‘ It would be a godsend to me this afternoon. There 
is nothing to read here — not even a newspaper. And 
a man can’t work on Sunday in a Catholic com- 
munity — unless he has been to mass.” 

Virginia smiled: 

‘ ‘ I will run upstairs and get it for you now. ’ ’ What 
was it in her that made her respond so instinctively 
to that tone of impatience, those words of dry dis- 
gust? The blood of her father? Virginia did not 
question what or why. She came back to Davis as 
to one of her own kind, feeling happy to come. And 
yet when he was standing before her with the opened 
book in his hand, he asked out of the leaves he was 
absently turning: 

“And your grandfather?” 


[ 84 ] 


THE BOSS 


She answered him with the sure serenity of her 
Roman Catholic faith; 

“The masses have been said for his soul.’’ 

Left alone, and in order that he might remain 
alone, Davis carried the book to a bench under the 
pecan tree and sat considering its printed pages, and 
seeing some pictures there. — A sorry little farm cling- 
ing to a caving bank — his recent survey had thrown 
this farm outside the levee. It was a tidy little place 
now, leased to a thrifty ’Cajan; but when the old 
levee failed its condition would be even more sorrow- 
ful than it had been when Tomas Cleve was trying 
to farm it : 

“Poor devil!” And yet Tomas Cleve had mar- 
ried the woman he loved. He had lived man’s one 
deep hour. 

Davis turned a page. 

And there was a picture of an old man in a loaded 
boat. Pitting the strength of his bent old back gal- 
lantly against the spin of the eddy. 

“Brave fellows that these old Frenchmen are! I 
would like to know that his body had been decently 
buried — even if the masses have been said for his 
soul. ’ ’ 

And by the softening light Davis saw yet another 
picture on the printed page. Young and pure and 
very wistful in its tender beauty. And seeing that 
picture there Davis shut the book and went to walk 
on the levee. 

He had not particularly noticed Virginia that first 
day in the hotel office. In his hurry and crowding 

[ 85 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


cares he had set his shoulders to shield her as un- 
thinkingly as he would have lifted a child from dan- 
ger of a wheel. And when she came to him asking 
for news he had seen only the anxiety in her eyes. 
But now he had seen her — 

‘‘Here — the wife of that gambler!” 

He had no fine fiing of French chivalry in his 
being, was only a Mississippian, brave enough, per- 
haps, but blunt of speech. His business in life was 
to build levees and to keep them from breaking after 
they were built. He raised his hat to women and 
gave up his seat to them in public places, but he had 
ceased to idealize them after the girl he was engaged 
to had, to put it plainly, thrown him over for a richer 
man. Hurt and unhappy he had promised himself 
then that he would never again throw his cloak into 
the mud for any woman to walk upon. But this 
woman was so young, so pathetic in her purity. Was 
there nothing he could put between her and the mud 
of this evil place? 

Davis had not read poetry since they made him 
do it at school, but he felt the need of poetry now 
out there on the levee with the River going by and 
the stars shining down — and that gentleness gather- 
ing through all his being as the mist was gathering 
on the water. 


[ 86 ] 


CHAPTER VIII 


The Soul in Purgatory 

‘‘Ah, my God! It is cold, it will be tonight!’’ 

The masses had indeed been said for M. Lerot’s 
soul, but M. Lerot was not yet out of purgatory be- 
cause M. Lerot was not yet dead. 

“Ah, my God! It is cold, it will be tonight.” 
Wrecked in mind and worn in body, the old man sat 
over his fire and fed it, muttering about the freezing 
night. But he had no thought of cold nor any con- 
cern for it. Shivering as a dog shivers, feeling only 
with the faculties of a dumb beast M. Lerot was spared 
the anguish of human perceptions and the multiplied 
agonies of a man’s imagination. His camp fire’s glow 
and gleam fell upon the palmetto hut that stood him 
in stead for shelter, struck up against the swamp, 
black beyond the bayou. M. Lerot sat, dozed and 
muttered. 

It had been many months since that Saint’s Day in 
May, but Monsieur did not care for that. The River 
had come upon him as he lay face down on the little 
white bed and with the smell of her mud had brought 
him the madness that she always brought. Monsieur 
had staggered up ready as ever to give back blow for 
blow to the enemy that had ruined him. He had 
found his pirogue and prepared his paddle for the 
fight. But the sweep of the water had been too swift 


[ 87 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


for Monsieur, spent with heart-ache as he was, and 
the River wrought her wicked will with him at last. 
Had lifted him and carried him as she had borne all 
her other waste and wreckage back to the swamp. 
And though he cursed and struggled she had left 
him there to pay with a death of slow starvation for 
the sacks that had checked her course. 

But old though he was, beaten and broken. Monsieur 
had a heart in him that had learned to hate and while 
his hate lived. Monsieur would live, mad maybe, only 
a muttering old man, yet living to thwart the River 
once more in her maliciousness: 

“You t’ink you have fetched me so far I cannot 
come back to beat you some more, ha?’’ he said to 
the receding water. “But, me, I will come. And 
I will slap paddle in your face” — 

So he wandered in the swamp, muttering cease- 
lessly, seeking always the deeper stream through the 
wasting water; living on the black berries that hung 
from the high bushes where the rank vines had 
clustered them; living on the birds’ eggs he found 
in drooping branch or stunted tree; living day by 
day just to find his way back and so slap his paddle 
into the face of the River once more. Canebrakes 
closed him in, shallow places barred his way, turned 
aside, checked and hindered, but always dumbly per- 
sisting, M. Lerot fared on. A bird caught from its 
roosting, a fish marooned in a puddle, following always 
the drift toward deeper water, going down to the 
bayou as an alligator goes, making no wrong turns, 
deluded by no vain hopes for a shorter cut, Monsieur 

[ 88 ] 


THE SOUL IN PURGATOEY 


and his brave old pirogue went on day by day through 
the gloom of it, night by night under the blackness 
of it, with the boding owl for cheer. And sometimes 
he sniffed the breeze and sometimes he smelled the 
water, but he never looked up to the sun nor strove 
to steer by the stars. — In that dense tangle of vine 
and leaf there was neither sun nor stars. So he 
worked his way, paddling or resting at the paddle, 
muttering and sleeping, with no thought of the garden 
he had made, no memory of his baby, nor of the man 
that he had been. Only madness that did not know 
it was mad and the purpose that his hate had planned. 

But after Monsieur came down into the bayou 
even his purpose seemed to have wandered. He pulled 
the pirogue up on the bank, stretched himself in the 
sun and slept. For days and days he lingered there 
in the warm June weather, sleeping, resting, feasting 
upon the fish he caught. And when at last he would 
have gone on down the bayou the old pirogue had 
settled into the soft mud of the bank and he could not 
push it down into the water that waited limpid and 
brown to bear him on his way. 

“When rain come bayou will rise some and you 
will fioat,’’ Monsieur said talking to his boat as he 
had talked to it in the long years that they had gone 
together over the fair face of False river. “When 
rain comes.’’ So he waited for the September rains, 
making meanwhile a hut of palmetto leaves, weaving 
the roof, shaping the sides, making it weather proof 
according to his skill. Wild plums ripened, persim- 
mons began to turn, but the rains to raise the bayou 

[ 89 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


did not come. Monsieur gathered moss from the trees 
where it hung in lengths as long and broad as a man, 
gray and soft. He lined his hut with it, he made a 
bed knee deep and warm. The pig nuts and pecans fell 
from frosted burrs and still no rain, or, not rain 
enough to float the old boat sinking deeper daily in 
the mud. The winter came with bear meat, and camp 
flres, and the bitter night that made Monsieur re- 
member : 

‘‘Ah, my God, it is cold it will be tonight,” he had 
said, and then he said slowly: 

“Ah, my God, it is cold winter up yonder. Ohio 
will stay froze all winter. It is not January rise we 
shall have. But in May — Ha, you t’ink you will 
come sneak on me some more while I am sleeping? 
But, me, I will watch out for you, I know, me what 
it is you going do in May.” And he rose there in 
the blackness of the swamp beyond the bayou and 
shook his flst at the River where she taunted him miles 
away. And he defled her and damned her — for by 
now Monsieur’s madness was well-fed and fierce. 

“When March come,” he cried, cursing in his 
helplessness, “When March come plenty rain will 
come. Bayou will rise, and, me, I will be ready to 
fight. you some more.” 

A dry. summer and drier fall with the water only 
five feet deep in False river; a dry cold winter with 
ice-locked upper streams. — It was not Monsieur alone 
who saw the signs and read them. Davis saw and 
read them, too. 


[ 90 ] 


CHAPTER IX 

The Little Chaud-Tete 

With wandering in the swamps and waiting at 
the windows the months were accomplished and the 
May day came again. 

Virginia had become an object of common observa- 
tion to the hotel people, even as her clothes had be- 
come an object of common envy — even as she had be- 
come a theme of perpetual recurrence in the thoughts 
of Davis, the civil engineer. 

Once a month, for nearly a year, Davis had gone 
into Bogue Vache to draw funds to meet his payroll, 
and each day that he had dined there Francois had 
seated Virginia at his side. 

‘ ‘ That she should be Ms wife ! ’ ’ 

But the Boss was not walking the levee for the 
purpose of thinking about another man^s wife — but 
rather to guard it against the mischief another man 
might do. For the River was high and the people on 
the side opposite him were threatened with a crevasse. 
A break on this side would relieve them, and if a 
levee will not break of its own accord a few blows from 
pick or spade dealt deeply in the dark may make it 
break of man^s accord. A dangerous deed and done 
at the risk of a rifle ball, certainly, yet not a deed too 
dangerous for a desperate man. Davis knew this, 
knew, too, that when a man comes to cut a levee he 

[ 91 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


does not come unarmed. Last year he had himself 
been a member of the coroner’s jury that sat upon 
the body of a man found dead on the levee that man 
had volunteered to guard. The finding had been that 
the deceased had been killed by a blow from some 
blunt weapon struck from behind; the verdict had 
been, as usual, ‘‘Death by violence.” Davis know- 
ing all this well enough walked guarding the old levee 
he meant to hold until the new levee he had built 
behind it should be sodded on the water side; and 
when he came to the water-mark he opened the lan- 
tern under his coat and read the stage ; for Davis, the 
civil engineer, was a Mississippian and therefore not 
a cautious man. 

“21.4,” he closed the slide and clipped his brows 
together. The levee would stand 25. There was three 
and six-tenths between the River and her little farm. 
Davis went back slowly, alertly along the way he 
had come, watching the darkness for a shadow on it, 
guarding the silence for a sound. “21.4.” 

Yesterday the stage had stood at 20., the day before 
at 19.9. 

“The crest of the rise reached Vicksburg last 
night. ’ ’ 

Seven more days to rise and the River rising at the 
rate of 1.1 a day with only three and six-tenths to 
show and the sod scarcely started on the new levee 
beyond. High water two years in succession: that 
was what the levee Board had not counted on. It 
had been slow with appropriation — slow with sup- 
plies — ^boiling the Boss in his own impatience. 

[ 92 ] 


THE LITTLE CHAUD-TETE 


^‘And now, unless there is a crevasse above us,^’ 
Davis thought, and added — 

“So young, and in that place!” 

He had from Bogue Vache the unreasoning recoil 
that some women have from snakes ; and for the chaud- 
tete all of an Anglo-Saxon’s deep-seated disgust. 

“And she cannot look out of her window without 
looking into that dirty beast’s yard. I wonder if she 
knows — but of course she does, she is not a fool.” He 
eased the weight of the rifle barrel in the hollow of 
his arm and took thought of the stage : 

“21.4. But if there should be a crevasse at 
Logan” — 

The levee at Logan was rotten, Davis knew it. He 
had reported its condition months ago and been 
swearing ever since at the inaction of the Board. But 
if there should be a crevasse there now? It would 
mean back water for Bogue Vache, but it would save 
the tiny farm nestled between the old levee and the 
new. How little and lone and left-out it had looked 
last evening all by itself down there in the waning 
light. Behind him he felt the Eiver going by, sound- 
less and soulless, and knew she was smiling her thin- 
lipped yellow smile, and he recalled the books and 
magazines he and Virginia had exchanged, and their 
brief bits of talking — how clever her criticisms had 
been. 

“And so young — ^barely sixteen — if that.” 

Tomorrow he would be riding into Bogue Vache 
again for funds to meet some small camp-expenses. 
He would see — 


[ 93 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Davis frowned: 

“No; I don’t know — I don’t know that I shall take 
dinner there tomorrow.” 

He flashed his light to read the stage again, looked 
out over the River; looked down at the farm; and 
then swore at the weight of the rifle on his arm; at 
the weight of the stick in his boot-leg ; at the mud and 
misery of it all. 

Virginia was not a fool. A year of life as it was 
lived in Bogue Vache could teach many lessons and 
Virginia, unhappily, had brains enough to learn. 
And when the lessons were learned one by one she 
began to spell with them — sitting alone in her big 
empty room, began to spell with them as a child might 
spell with blocks, and the word they spelled was 
“Caution.” Caution that she say nothing; that she 
do nothing ; that she trust Francois as she might trust 
the wind, indeed, but not otherwise. 

Of the many women who stopped at the hotel to 
wait for a boat there were not a few who would have 
been worthy of Virginia’s confldence; women who 
wondered at her position, hut believed in her purity : 
who would have been glad to give sympathy had Vir- 
ginia but asked it. 

“The little Madame Francois,” they learned, “was 
proud.” Madame Francois, the servants told them, 
never left her room, save on Monsieur’s arm. All 
day long she stayed there, sewing sometimes, making 
the pretty dresses she wore so prettily, reading some- 
times in papers, sometimes in books. Reading one 
book many times. Not the Bible, no ! It was a book 

[ 94 ] 


THE LITTLE CHAUD-TETE 


with a blue back that she read in every day. “Oh, 
mais non. Madame Frangois had no children.’’ 

To the women who had homes; to the women who 
traveled; to the lady in the parlor, and to the cook 
in the kitchen such a life seemed unendurable. What 
it seemed to her Virginia did not say — not even to 
herself. She was a ’Cajan and as a ’Cajan en- 
dured patiently the hardships she suffered; she was 
an American and as an American she would be strong 
in the rights she reserved. Her nature was the result 
of two forces — two opposing forces. Virginia did 
not know — did not try to know. Only to live her life 
out day by day — keeping her word to be a queen, while 
the word made mock of her dreary state. Only to live 
her life out, enduring the drab dirtiness of the street ; 
the children that played in the yard, the never-ending 
“come seven, come ’leven” of the crap-shooter, the 
smell of the liquor that rose from the bar; and the 
smell of the mud that came up from the River ; endur- 
ing it all, absence of tenderness and emptiness of days. 
It was her life — the life of clean hands that she had 
demanded. She endured it even as she endured the 
memories of the garden her folly had laid waste, the 
thought of the fond old heart her heedlessness had 
broken : 

“Madame Croisant had seen him go into his house 
and shut the door” — After she had told him, ah, yes! 
After she had told him. He had never been seen 
since. 

“Would he have forgiven me if he had lived? 


[ 95 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Would he have let me love him — ah, if I had only loved 
him — ^then.” 

So from week end on to week end until pay-day 
came and Davis sat beside her at dinner and talked to 
her in the short level r’s of her father’s tongue. 
Talked not of her or himself — she knew nothing at 
all about him, what work he was doing, where he 
came from or whither he went. Their talking was of 
the remote high places, dreams of a daring mind, 
and always her mind met his in a companionship of 
comprehension that was waking and wide and warm. 

And on this merky May Saint’s Day, with the 
River high against the levee, with the horror of over- 
flow or the dread of back-water heavy upon even the 
hopeless, Virginia came to the opening that gave upon 
her one clean comfortable spot in life and closed the 
door of it with an uneasiness she could not under- 
stand. Saying ; 

Today is pay-day and he will be at dinner again. 
But I will not go down to dinner again.” 

She had just finished dressing for dinner when that 
uneasiness came to close the door. Instead of the 
usual white bud, Francois had brought a crimson 
japonica for her hair. In the glass before her Vir- 
ginia saw its effect — the flower in her hair repeated 
the color in her lips and between them her eyes looked 
out from under their lashes, larger, darker, deeper 
and brighter than she had ever seen them before. Had 
Francois known how it would be? 

‘‘No,” Virginia whispered, “I cannot go down to 
dinner today.” 


[ 86 ] 


THE LITTLE CHAUD-TfiTE 

“Ma reine! Channant!” 

Francois had flung open the door and was standing 
in the doorway, his eyes and manner alike joyous 
with pride. 

“Charmant! M. Davee will forget his high water 
when he is sit by you today.” 

Virginia steadied her tone, fearing lest it betray 
that she was bothered and unhappy: 

“Mr. Davis will not sit by me today,” she said. 

Frangois’ eyes so very bright in their fire-bitten 
brown ran past her, laughing. He seemed to be seeing 
something that made him prouder than the beauty 
of his queen had ever made him : 

“Mais oui, he will sit by you. Me, I could not stay 
for dinner today, ’t is man I must go see” — Fran- 
cois’ eyes grew prouder in their laughing — “young 
man I must go see. So I say to M. Davee, ^Will you 
see ma Madame t ’rough dinner ? ’ And he say to me, 
but yes, it is proud he will be to take care of you.” 

“That was all he could say,” Virginia commented 
coldly. Then she said firmly: 

“I will not go down to dinner today,” and saying 
this she put up her hand and took the wonder-working 
flower from her hair. 

“Quoi,” Francois uttered. His eyes left off their 
laughing and went to the window furtive, uneasy. 
Had she heard what he had just heard: 

‘ ‘ Tete-blue, I was fool to do t ’ing so close ! ’ ’ Aloud 
he repeated in dismay: 

“You do not wish to go down?” 

“I will not go down.” 

[ 97 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Prangois looked at her and relieved, looked away; 

“Non, she has not hear. An if she does not go 
down, if she stay in her room till tomorrow — 

“C^est bien, ma reine! If you do not wish to go 
down, you do not go down. I will have nigger 
woman — Mais, non, it is me will fetch you dinner 
on plate. What it is I shall fetch ? Some soup, some 
fish, some beefsteak ? ’ ’ — he rattled out of the room with 
his ridiculous bill of fare, leaving Virginia to the 
solitude her will tiad wrought. Absently, wearily, 
with no thought now of its beauty, she took up the 
flower and thrust it again into her hair. 

To Davis, Frangois made his excuses: 

“Eh bien. Monsieur, Madame will not come down 
to dinner today. ’T is so she say — she will not leave 
her room, not at all, she will not. Me, I do not know 
for why she will not leave her room. Mais it is so 
she say. Like woman say, it is so she will do. But 
for why she say — God knows Frangois shrugged 
and remembered his manners; 

“I t’ank you. Monsieur.’^ 

“Not at all,” Davis said, and sat down to dine 
alone. Logan had broken, there would be back- 
water in Bogue Vache by midnight, the panic had 
emptied the hotel, the last boat had gone down loaded. 
Davis, knowing these things had thought to dine alone 
save for one delicious little presence. Now he was 
disappointed and annoyed with himself that he should 
be disappointed. 

Frangois had asked him, in case he stayed for 
[ 98 ] 


THE LITTLE CHAUD-TETE 

supper, to take Virginia out for a little walk on the 
levee after the sun went down: 

‘ ‘ She would go wit ’ you, Monsieur. She would not 
by herself or wit’ anybody else. And it is all day 
she has been shut in her room.” 

Davis had agreed and afterward he had thought 
of it. 

Out there in the dewy stillness, just they two 
alone together under the stars. The sharpness of his 
disappointment made him suspicious: 

“What is that red-headed fool trying to do?” and 
he remembered a criticism he had read : 

“Trust a Frenchman to know what a man’s blood 
will do when it is up and warm. ’ ’ This gambler, un- 
clean and without honor, had thought to play upon his 
honor for some unholy purpose. 

What was that purpose? 

Davis laid his right hand on the cloth before him 
and looked at it, strong, well-made and masculine. 
Davis looking at this saw a girl’s face appealing 
in its purity, and as he sat there through the dinner 
hour with drawn brows and locked jaws he was 
thinking neither of building levees nor breaking 
levees, neither of the need of haste nor of high water. 
When the waiter came to clear the table Davis put 
three questions to him and though this waiter was 
a Frenchman with obsequious “Monsieur” forever 
on his lips, he answered those questions straightly 
as a man must who gave information to the Boss. 
What he knew of Francois; of the luscious mulatto 
girl, of the little chaud-tete that had come today — 

[ 99 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


all the kitchen talk the waiter told. And when the 
man had made an end of his telling, Davis nodded, 
gave him a quarter and went out to look at the stage 
and the River. Not forgetting at all the rotten old 
levee he had elected to guard, yet thinking deeply of 
this ‘ other charge that had come into his keeping : 
tossed there by the Wind, or given by God? Davis 
did not question how. He was a man of deeds, not 
questionings. As he strode along in his muddy boots 
he said to himself : 

“The crevasse at Logan has made things safe 
enough until tonight. — I must manage to see her 
somehow before I go.^’ 

He should have been in camp, the boots kicked from 
his aching feet, his collar open, his tired body sunk 
in sleep, but Davis had no thought now for the cot 
that waited or for the watching and waking that had 
worn even his stubborn strength down to weariness. 
Walking, and thinking carefully as he walked, he had 
come to a warehouse outside the levee. It was up to 
its eaves now in water and its roof was as a little 
island in a murky sea. Francois and a negro roust- 
about were stretched upon this roof and between them 
Davis saw some money. The money, it seemed, was 
not enough. Francois gestured grandly, indignantly, 
persuasively, but the roustabout kept shaking his 
kinky head. Then, eagerly, and as though he had 
just thought of it, Francois rose to his elbow, swept 
the money into his pocket, and the words “Cheval 
vite” rang out so sharply that they reached Davis 
across the silent water. The roustabout responded 

[ 100 ] 


THE LITTLE CHAUD-TETE 


with an instant change of attitude, listened, took 
orders, and soon slid from the roof, going back to 
Bogue Vache in the skiff that had brought him. 

Francois rolled over and lay face down on the 
boards. His fast horse was gone : 

“But me, I am going have my little chap safe wit’ 
me tonight.” Only a little chaud-tete, perhaps, but 
then it was his very own, his first very own. 

“And it is good part I shall do by him. I shall take 
him to France where chaud-tete is fine as white child 
is. I shall make money for him, plenty money. ’ ’ And 
Frangois, lying out there in the midst of a murky 
sea under a low-bending murky sky, saw just how 
all this money would be made: 

“Run River,” he said. 

Bogue Vache had been dull for a year; now, with 
its back water, it would be dead for months to come. 
But out on the River, where the stately packets went 
up and down, where wealthy men traveled and bored 
men set in for a little game of poker — ^up in the Texas 
where plantations often changed hands in a night, 
there would be rich pickings for a sharp gambler to 
garner in. Francois saw just how it would be. 

And Davis, reading all the signs, understood too 
just how it would be, and burned in the rush of rage 
the vision brought : yet in his anger felt troubled and 
torn so that his hand shook when he settled his hat. 


[ 101 ] 


CHAPTER X 


The Little Green Book 

WONDER if he is going to stay to supper,’^ Vir- 
ginia drew back from her window, surprised to see 
Davis returning to the hotel. 

And if he should stay to supper, would she go down ? 
The questions came in quick sequence. What had 
Frangois told him? That she had refused his care? 

“And he has been so kind to me, I would not want 
him to think I was proud with him.” 

And, indeed, the gentle little Madame all in her 
loneliness, scared by fears she could not fathom, had 
not meant to be proud. Why had she refused to be 
placed in charge of the only man she trusted? Be- 
cause Frangois wished to place her there? She could 
not say. Brought up in the gardens of Pointe Coupee, 
sheltered, safe-guarded, what was this unknown thing 
she had shrunk from, shrinking through all the 
woman’s soul of her? 

“But I can never go back to my garden again.” 
And thinking of her garden, bending with beauty, 
yearning with sweetness, Virginia moved to watch 
the street. Would Davis cross it or pass on to the 
bank? It startled her to see what a busy street it 
was. So many people hurrying there, with the dread 
of the back-water and the wish to escape. Troubled 
men and worried women with just time to catch a 


[ 102 ] 


THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK 


boat, or draw some money, or buy provisions or, 
perhaps, say a prayer. People in carriages, on foot 
and in saddle, and there in the thick of the stream 
a little creole pony hitched to a ^Cajan cart. Virginia 
leaned to look. Let them hurry as they would, the 
pony took his time, trotting slowly. — They say a 
Creole pony may trot all day in the shade of a single 
tree. Virginia had time to see the baby that lifted 
a wobbly little head to crow at the sights of the crowd 
and to see the brown, brave faces of father and mother 
that bent toward the baby, delighted of lip, and proud 
and happy in their eyes: 

‘‘Albert. Ah, I did not know he had a little child. 

The baby toppled with its own over-joyous effort, 
the mother cuddled it close for comforting,- and the 
father lifted his head and laughed tenderly, proudly, 
straight out from his heart. 

“Ah,’’ Virginia said softly. She turned about to 
her chair and sat down. The garden she had wasted 
came gathering about her in its fragrance, wide-eyed 
jonquil, orange and rose — the scent of the sweet-olive 
strained her heart. The garden she had wasted! 
And of the garden that might have been hers — the 
wifely duty, the mother love? 

“But I,” she said in utter self-condemnation, “I 
wished to keep my hands clean.” She charged her 
folly as fully as she should and left it to stand so 
written through her years: 

“Yes! I called Frangois Le Vent; but it is I who 
am the wind. A wind in my own garden and in my 
Grandpa’s garden. I have been even as a wind in 

[ 103 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Frangois^ life. Whatever there was to waste, I have 
wasted.” Her French blood rose in its eagerness, 
wrung her with its reckless remorse, pierced her with 
its poignancy and its passion. But later, when the 
long hours of after dinner had passed ; when the boat 
had blown its three, deep-throated notes at the land- 
ing; when the hurrying crowds had made an end of 
their hurrying, later when the hotel steward came 
knocking at her door with a bill that had been run- 
ning for a month or more that same French blood 
lifted Virginia’s head and gave her the gracious 
courage of her kind: 

“Thank you, Monsieur. I see the bank is still 
open. I will take my little green book and go at once 
to get your money for you.” 

And a little later still, when a jaded cashier had 
pointed a penholder and said patiently: 

“Please notice the entry, Madame. Monsieur 
Frangois drew out your deposit nearly a year ago,” 
the gallant blood rose yet again, gave her ready speech 
and courteous, clothed her with gentle dignity, bore 
her with unbroken bearing from the bank and then — 
left her tired and troubled, alone in the street that 
was a muck in wet weather, a dust bed in dry — that 
would by night be awash in a dirty tide. 


[ 104 ] 


CHAPTER XI 

The Flower in Her Hair 

Virginia, deserted by her courage, forlorn and all 
alone turned her face away. She had no money to 
pay the hotel bill, then she could not go back to the 
hotel. The flower in her hair, stirred by her nervous 
walking, nestled deeper, her breathing caught and 
broke. She might not go back to the hotel, then where 
might she go? A dull gray steeple, white of cross 
and peaceful rose up in answer. Where may a 
Eoman Catholic always go when her heart is heavy 
and her courage fails? Into the church whose door 
is never locked ; to the shrine of the merciful Mother 
whose ear is never too far away. Virginia knelt. The 
silence that brooded about her was cool and dim and 
peaceful even as the silence of her garden had been. 
She began to pray, feeling safe and sheltered before 
the Virgin’s shrine. 

But for Davis, and he knew it, the stark sunshine 
of the street and the staring crowds had been a safer 
shield. Nervous, and not sure of himself, he bent over 
that kneeling figure: 

^ ‘ Tell me, tell me at once. Have you any friends — 
and relatives that you can go to?” 

Virginia rose and stood beside him, the flower in 
her hair worked its wonder in her eyes; 

'‘My Grandfather is dead,” she reminded gently. 

Davis checked and turned his eyes away. 

[ 105 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


know,’’ he said. He looked at the altar and 
after a moment put his hat down that he might thrust 
his hands into his pocket. And so guarded he turned 
back stubbornly to look upon the beauty that had 
never been so beautiful before — so strangely moving: 

‘‘You can’t stay here. Don’t. Your” — But he 
could not say that word. Not here in the dimness and 
the nearness with all the world shut out. He stopped 
and turned the words around: 

“Francois is gone — he is not coming hack. I want 
to send you away from here. I want to know that you 
will be sheltered and cared for before I leave to- 
night” — 

“Thank you, Mr. Davis, but Francois”- — 

“He’s gone. He’s not coming back. He — he did 
not go alone.” 

“He did not?” But just as she questioned it Vir- 
ginia saw Francois’ eyes, laughing just as Albert’s 
had laughed when he looked upon his little son. 

“No,” Davis said, “That colored girl” — She was 
too young for such stuff as this. 

Virginia said softly: 

“The baby must have been a boy” — 

“You knew!” 

“No, I did not know. I did not think until you 
said” — 

“Well! Let it go! What I want to do, now, is to 
get you away from here. I want to put you on a boat 
and send you to a convent in New Orleans. You can 
stay there until you get your divorce and then” — 


[ 106 ] 


THE FLOWER IN HER HAIR 


“Divorce.” Virginia drew back gently. “I can- 
not get a divorce, Mr. Davis. I am a Catholic.” 

In all the thinking Davis had done in the last long 
hour, he had not thought of this, and now he would 
not think of it. He put it impatiently aside: 

“Never mind the religious part of it.” He shut 
his hands hard in his pockets and plunged into prac- 
tical details. “Here, we must hurry up and put this 
thing through. Some one might come in — it would 
be best for you not to be seen talking to me. A sister 
will meet you in New Orleans — she is all right. She 
is an angel, she nursed me once when I was sick.” 

“When you were sick?” Virginia’s eyes showed 
surprise and after that — concern. 

Davis said sharply: 

“Don’t!” But his hands came out of his pockets 
and caught up hers both together between his own : 

“Promise me! Promise me that when The City of 
the South lands tonight you will go on board. You 
will be all right. That sister will meet you. You 
need not see me until it is all over. There is a nice 
old lawyer I know. I ’ll send him to you. He’ll make 
it as easy for you — Yes? What is it?” 

Virginia, having interrupted him with that sound 
of pained protest was yet unable to say to him clearly 
what it was. She had been as wind in her grand- 
father’s garden, wasting its sweetness; and in Fran- 
cois’ garden — though it had been but a wild tangle 
of weed and vine, what had she done to dress or to 
keep it? Was she to wander now into this strong 
man’s life plot, to twist and torture its straight up- 

1107] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


standing trees — to strew its ordered paths? Better 
die as a woman than live any longer as a wind. But 
Virginia could not say all this to Davis. She could 
only draw away her hands and say with dignity; 

“Thank you, Mr. Davis, but I will not take the 
boat tonight.” 

“You must ! ^ ^ Davis caught her hands into a closer 
clasp, a master of men not made to be denied. “You 
must. I cannot go away and leave you here un- 
protected. Don^t you understand that you are dear 
to me? Let me take care of you. You can stay at 
the convent until your divorce is granted — then we 
can be married — 

“You forget, Mr. Davis. I was married to Francois 
by the priest, and as long as Francois lives I will be 
married to him. ’ ’ 

“Do you love him? You know you do not! Did 
you ever love him?” 

“No; it was Albert I loved.” 

“Albert.” The Boss lifted his head, released her 
hands, took his hat from the altar. 

‘ ‘ That woman passing yonder with a basket is com- 
ing to the front door,” he said. “Now here’s what 
I am going to do — I am going to wire the sister 
superior to send a carriage to meet The City of the 
South when she ties up on Thursday. I am going to 
take a passage for you and I am going to believe with 
all my heart that you are a good little girl and will 
go on board as you are told. Just stay here until you 
hear the whistle, then go across to the landing, or, 
the clerk at the hotel will see you on board. She’s 


[ 108 ] 


THE FLOWER IN HER HAIR 


at the door — ^you better kneel down. Ill go out as 
I came — Here, good-bye” — 

Then the thing called control failed, torn through 
by the untamed flood. Virginia was caught up as on 
the rush of the crevasse, held closely, kissed on eyes 
and lips — and left alone with no flower in her hair. 

The woman at the door came in, she was an old 
woman with live ducks in her basket. Virginia knelt 
and the old woman knelt beside her. Their heads 
bowed meekly, their lips moved, their Angers told the 
beads. The ducks quacked out foolishly in the pauses 
between their whispered prayers. 


[ 109 ] 


CHAPTER XII 


The Talking of the Star 

When a keeper came to close the church door against 
the water that would be wandering there that night, 
Virginia left the shrine of the Virgin and went down 
to the levee. The other woman with her duck and 
basket had been gone a good while. Virginia did 
not know who she was or where she had gone — she 
had not tried to know. 

“I wonder,’^ she said to herself, as she followed the 
way of the weary street “I wonder where a wind 
should go when it wishes to rest ? ’ ^ 

The River wide and wilful gave ready answer. 
Many times had her murky waters made silent burial 
for despair. Virginia heard the answer and — What 
else was there that she could do? 

The steamboat whistle came, deep-throated and 
serene; the man at the sounding sang his “Mark 
Twain,’’ the gang plank swung down to the landing; 
the rush ran over it. Hoarse voices and continuous 
clamor of loading; and through it all his voice husky 
and hurried with its parting plea: 

“You will take the boat — The City of the South.” 

“No,” Virginia said aloud, “I will not take the 
boat.” And as a thing that the wind had tired of, 
flung aside and forgotten, homeless, penniless, be- 
tween the water that drew on and the water that 


[ 110 ] 


THE TALKING OF THE STAR 


waited she stood on the levee and watched The City 
of the South go by. The fastest boat on the River, 
stately and tall, her white paddle boxes and their 
letters in gold gleamed proudly through the murk 
of that murky day. Virginia smiled to see it go by 
unshaken — like Davis in its strength and courage. 

“1 am glad I did not go/^ she said, and saying it 
saw how much she had wanted to go. How his pledge 
of protection had tempted her, how her weakness had 
been pleading with her for the safety and shelter of 
his strength: 

‘ ‘ I will not be a wind in his garden. No, no, — after 
I knew — how it was with him ; after — ^he — No, no ! It 
would have been wrong for me to take the boat. It 
would have been wicked.’’ 

But then, if neither, the River’s answer nor the 
boat’s answer, what answer? Virginia did not know. 
It had been a long day and she was tired. Still, even 
in her weariness, she must do something. It was get- 
ting late. Over in the gray west, faint against the 
gloom of it an early star was beginning to flicker. 
More than a year since she had seen it, but the words 
her grandfather had taught her came obediently in 
greeting : 

“Des etoiles me parlent d’esp6rance, me parlent de 
Dieu,” she whispered absently; then, rousing, smiled 
a little sorrowfully, for the sorrow of the thought: 

She who was of so little use in life — ^so idle and so 
vain, could any star ever talk to her of heaven or of 
hope? 

Yet the star talked on with its far faint flicker 

[ 111 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


through the grayness and the gloom, talking not of 
heaven, nor perhaps of hope; but telling as bravely 
as may be of a shelter from the night. It spoke of 
Virginia’s farm between the old levee and the new. 
Her dot — Hers if Francois had not sold it. Who 
would buy it, thrown outside the levee as it was ? And 
yet the thought had little cheer. Even if the farm 
was hers to claim for shelter, she did not know 
the road to it, nor how far it was from Bogue Vache. 
It was somewheres to the south of her — that was all 
Virginia knew. 

“If I had a boat I could just go down with the 
River until I came to the bend where the tall pecan 
trees are.” 

“Having no boat nor any great care for one, Vir- 
ginia moved on listlessly along the levee — the thought 
that she was at least going away from Bogue Vache 
kept her feet stepping on and on. And so in her slow, 
tired stepping, Virginia came upon a pirogue adrift 
in the slack water along the levee. Old, weather-worn 
and worm-eaten it nosed its way along while an old 
man slept in the bottom of it, his face turned up to 
the failing light. 

“My grandpa!” 

Could it be her grandfather — this neglected, aban- 
doned old man flung down there in the bottom of a 
rotting boat ; mud-marked, water-stained, his thin 
white hair straggling from under his dirty cap, — with 
a face all fallen together like a fool’s? 

It was the same old pirogue; the same old paddle 
that her grandfather’s hand had worn so smooth at 

[ 112 ] 


THE TALKING OP THE STAR 


the handle. Virginia leaned down, touching paddle 
and touching prow, her eyes on that empty face : 

“My grandpa. And he is alive!” Kneeling on 
the levee Virginia sobbed, praying and giving thanks 
in prayer. She would take him home to her little 
farm and she would cherish him so tenderly, so 
tenderly. 

M. Lerot awoke. The River that had taken him 
away in passion had brought him back in sport. This 
was all Virginia could gather from his broken talk 
of swamp and mud bank. Further explanation came 
to her in a confused way among her mixed emotions 
and hardly heeded in her straining tenderness. The 
crevasse at Logan had filled some small bayou until 
it broke through the dike across its mouth and so 
gave back to the River its own wild water again. The 
old pirogue riding the crest as a log might have ridden 
it had come through with the fiood and followed it 
on down stream. A miracle, or very nearly a miracle 
had been wrought to bring him safe to his baby’s feet, 
but Monsieur, sleeping, had not known — did not know 
it now. 

“Ma Bebe,” he said, and smiled — the weak smile 
of one whose mind has wandered and will never come 
quite clearly home again. 

Virginia tried hard to keep her cheer: 

“You will go with me, my Grandpa, to my little 
dot like you used to call it on the Island. I will sew 
and make money, and I will cook and scrub and make 
garden for you like you used to make for me. And 
won’t we be happy there? 

[ 113 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


But to her cheer the old man gave only a mur- 
muring ; 

“Ma Bebe,” and turned to doze again — and the 
night came down. 

Virginia kneeling in the prow guided the pirogue’s 
blunt nose along the smoothly sodded side of the 
levee as she had so often in childhood guided it 
through the tangle of the garden going across False 
river to the Island school. She was sixteen years old 
now — a married woman who had not been a mother, a 
maid who might not marry — her life before her a 
thing of solicitude and fear. 

“My Grandpa,” she said, “we will know when we 
come to the right place because we will see the tall 
pecan trees there.” 

Monsieur made no answer, he was asleep. The 
night deepened upon his sleeping until even the lead- 
ing line of the levee was lost in darkness — and there 
was only the hush and the wash of the wreckage 
going down to the sea. 

“If it stays so dark I shall not be able to see the 
pecan trees — I shall not know.” The darkness 
deepened with the thought, the River grew wide. 
Virginia did not know where she was — how much 
farther she had to go or if, indeed, she had already 
gone too far. 

“If only my Grandpa were safe,” she whispered. 
And it* was then while she kneeled clinging to her 
paddle lonely and afraid that there came to Virginia 
a swift up-rushing of glad wings in her breast. 
Wings of a wild, sweet joy, sweeping exultantly they 

[ 114 ] 


THE TALKING OF THE STAR 


swept the loneliness from the River, the darkness from 
the night. Somewhere in the world there was a strong 
man with steady eyes and stern lips! So how could 
the world be a lonely place for her? The world was 
a glad, dear place, and she loved it. Loved the dirty 
streets of Bogue Vache because he had walked them; 
loved the great wide River because he had looked 
upon it ; loved the darkness and loved the day because 
they had soothed and lighted him on his brave, 
straight way. Where he was she did not know, but 
he was there, somewhere, clean and fine and true — and 
she loved him. 


1 115 J 


CHAPTER XIII 

On Guard 


Davis was standing guard; his eyes on the dark- 
ness, his ears on a strain — while shame stooped over 
him and heaviness wore him down. Twenty-four 
hours with his boots on and twelve more hours to wear 
them; but it was not the want of rest or sleep that 
bent his brows and broke his bearing. He had come 
upon her praying there in the silence and the incense, 
so young, so alone and — he had taken her lips ruth- 
lessly as a love-mad boy might have done. 

Davis stooped and gave himself to the sting. 

“I should have been on my guard — I should have 
known how it was with me.’^ He shifted his gun 
sharply to his left shoulder, his right hand felt for 
the flower in his pocket and, having found it, 
gathered it close. Where was she now? On board 
The City of the South? Small hope that she would 
trust herself to his keeping after that. So for a while 
standing there, straining into the night, his hand on 
the flower, he lived it deeply again — her lashes against 
his cheek, her lips of swift withdrawal. 

“I’d give my life to know that she was safe,” he 
said, and he meant it. 

“Whom can she turn to?” He shifted his gun 
back sharply to the hollow of his elbow and walked on : 

“As for her loving Albert — that is all nonsense. 


[ 116 ] 


ON GUARD 


She is too young yet to know what love means. Well, 
I did the worst I could.” He took thought moodily 
of the last hour of the wretched day — ^the hotel office 
when he had returned to it; the joking about the 
little green book that had broken oif so abruptly at 
his entrance; the looks exchanged behind his back 
when he called for Frangois’ hill and paid it. The 
French obsequiousness of the clerk when he booked a 
passage for her on the packet : 

‘‘But certainly, Monsieur. I will myself see Ma- 
dame to the very door of her stateroom” — Davis 
roused to swear yet again at the veiled meaning of that 
Madame : 

“Why couldn^t the fellow say Madame Frangois? 
I ought to have plastered his face against the wall 
behind him.” 

But the heavy question came again and choked his 
anger down. 

Where was she now in her loneliness — in her large- 
eyed loveliness? 

“I should not have left. I should have picked her 
up and put her on board that boat — I should have 
staid on in Bogue Vache and let this levee go to thun- 
der. I had done about all the harm I could do — an 
hour longer couldn’t have hurt much more — I’ve made 
a horrid mess of it.” Then anxiety came and wrung 
him with its anguish. 

“I’d give my life to know that she was safe!” 

But at a sound Davis again became the alert guard 
he had been last night, leaning toward the water, his 
breath caught in, his thumb on the hammer, cocking 

[ 117 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


softly. Down there in the River at his feet a drop 
of water had dripped from a lifted oar: 

“Hold on there! What are you doing here?’^ 

The challenge rang sternly, to be answered by a 
cry — of amazement, but not of that alone: 

“Mr. Davis 1’^ 

^^You!” And being on guard as he was, with his 
lips locked and his lantern out, Davis said no more. 

Virginia was helped and swiftly put safe on shore, 
her grandfather was placed silently beside her. The 
patient old pirogue itself was rolled over, bottom up 
on the levee, lest the persistent bumping of its blunt 
old nose do damage to the sodded side — lest, indeed, 
one dear little woman should by any chance take 
such perilous passage in it again. When all this had 
been done with the straight determined stroke of 
strength, Davis picked up his lantern and spoke. 

“I’ll see you across the road to your gate. I didn’t 
know you were coming here — tonight.” 

Virginia walked in the path of quivering light: 

“I didn’t know it either. I met my Grandpa in 
his pirogue and we came on together. ’ ’ 

Davis turned on her sternly: 

“Well, don’t ever do that again!” 

“No,” Virginia promised meekly, “I will not.” 
And she asked: 

“Is any one living here now?” 

“They moved out when the stage reached twenty 
and four. You’ll find a pretty good garden here, 
but I guess they cleaned out the groceries. This”- — 
he pulled his lunch from his pocket — “this will be a 

[ 118 ] 


ON GUAED 


little something for you to snack on until morning. 
Here you are, M. Lerot.’^ 

“Wait,” Virginia interposed, “What are you do- 
ing? You are giving us your supper. I cannot let 
you do that.” 

M. Lerot took the package, smelling the meat in it, 
and walked on through the gate. When Virginia 
would have stopped him, Davis put the matter im- 
patiently aside: “Oh, bother, bother,” — he got out 
his pocketbook: 

“ It is of no consequence — Let me give you this — and 
about sending into Bogue Vache for your things to- 
morrow morning. There will be a man going in from 
here with a boat, he can bring your boxes along with 
the rest if you wish.” 

Virginia was bending her head to the light to look 
at ^ ‘ this. ’ ’ She said thank you, and then : 

“Mr. Davis, you have paid this bill.” 

“Oh, it is all right — I — didn’t want you to he 
annoyed. You can settle for the cinque sous whenever 
you want to. Now, see here.” 

Virginia looking up with a smile for his absurdity 
saw his face lined and gray in the lantern light, and 
cried before she could check the impulse: 

‘ ‘ Oh, you are so tired ! ’ ’ 

“No, no,” Davis denied with sudden lightness. 
“No, I do not know that I am particularly tired. 
Here — you had better keep the lantern. Take care of 
yourself. Good night.” 

“You are so tired,” how sweetly she had said it ! 

“She is not his wife. She never was his wife. The 

[ 119 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


idea of a fourteen-year-old girl taking a vow that 
could be binding on her for life! It^s all folly — not 
even a Roman Catholic could stand for that. ’ ’ — 
Down the Mississippi River in the rotten old pirogue. 
— The gentle dignity of that “Mr. Davis. How fine 
she was, how flawless, tired, strained and distressed 
as she must have been — now brave and steady in her 
courage : 

“Just the finest little woman in this wide world!’’ 

And there was her face in the light again, with its 
shadow of concern, its tenderness: 

“You are so tired.” 

“If I can only persuade her to get a divorce the 
pope can go to thunder.” 

And then came the dignity of her “Mr. Davis” 
setting aside his will, denying his love and longing, 
making a wall of her marriage vow. 

Davis shifted his rifle and bent his head, and so 
walked on by the River, keeping watch with the won- 
der of a woman’s waking face and with the laws of 
God — ^not with the stately statutes traced upon tablets 
of stone, but keeping watch with the living law that 
the Lord God who made it has written into the body 
of a man. 

And at the end of the watch the gray light came to 
show, to whomever might be there to see, the face of 
the River and its run of ruin; to show to Madame 
Croisant in the dew by her garden gate a man whom 
she feared and idealized and loved and honored. 

“M. Davee,” she cried, hurrying, courtesying to 
his lifted hat. “M. Davee. Oh, you will come in 

[ 120 ] 


ON GUARD 


house and have some coffee? Me, I shall be glad. I 
shall’’— 

But the man by the gate put her politeness pleas- 
antly aside : 

^ ‘ No, thank you, Madame. All I want this morning 
is a bed and I am on my way to that now.” And 
then because he was the Boss direct of method and 
determined still, though tired, Davis asked: 

‘‘Didn’t you tell me once you knew the people who 
lived over yonder?” 

“ M. J acobs and his Madame ’ ’: — 

“No. No, not Jacobs. Tomas Cleve. ” 

“Oh, mais oui. Virginia Cleve and me, we was big 
friends. ’ ’ 

“Her daughter moved in there last night.” 

“Virginia? But, M. Davee! Virginia!” 

“Yes. Yes, she came last night. Now see here, 
what I want you to do for me. Get hold of that fellow 
Jacobs and tell him that he can’t go back to that place 
any more. Tell him to come to me and I ’ll settle with 
him for his lease and his crops. I ’ll find another farm 
for him. Can you do that?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, mais oui. Monsieur. Today I can do it — tout- 
de-suite. But, Virginia? And Francois, Monsieur. 
Frangois?” 

Davis was opening the garden gate. Madame heard 
an inarticuate sound of annoyance and then the short 
explanation : 

“He’s cleared out.” 

“Cleared out? Mais, Monsieur, Virginia? She is 
alone yonder?” 


[ 121 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘‘No, no! Her grandfather is with her. Good 
morning. 

“Her grandpa? M. Lerot? But I thought he was 
dead!’’ 

“Well, he is very nearly that.” This was in the 
Boss’s distinct utterance that told politely but posi- 
tively of an impatience that would stand not another 
word. Madame amazed and mystified, let him go — 
numb to the knees from long standing, tired, and 
heavy enough in his heart, God knows. And Madame, 
in her tenderness, understood it all. 

“Pauvre gargon,” she whispered, watching him 
walk away. “Pauvre gar§on.” 

Madame Croisant made coffee and went with a 
steaming pot of it, hurrying across the new levee to 
the farm next her own. 

She came upon Virginia gathering some of M. 
Jacobs’ vegetable for breakfast and sat the coffee-pot 
down excitedly upon the steps: 

“Mais, ma cherie,” she cried. “Ah, it is glad I 
am. It is one beautiful woman you have grown to be ! 
Ah, it is de pleasure” — And so saying she folded 
Virginia in her arms and sobbed as though her heart 
were breaking. “It is de pleasure she kept insist- 
ing between her sobs. “It is de pleasure! 

Virginia was kissed and cried over and gathered 
closely yet again. Then Madame dried her eyes: 

“It was M. Davee tell me you were here. He stop 
at gate to say me bon jour. And he say to me, ‘You 
know M. Tomas Cleve? Voila, his daughter has come 
home.’ ” 


[ 122 ] 


ON GUARD 


Virginia’s lips wanted to smile. Davis, she fancied 
was being misquoted. 

‘^You know Mr. Davis, Madame?” 

^‘Mais oui, I know him. ’T is plenty times,” and 
Madame Croisant told it with pride. ’T is plenty 
time he has left his compass wit’ me. And right now 
I have his compass in my kitchen. Void, Virginia, 
I have fetch you some hot coffee to show you how 
I am glad to see you some more. — M. Lerot! Bon 
jour. Monsieur. I see you well?” 

Responding as a cello string responds with the note 
that is struck from it. Monsieur made courteous 
answer : 

^‘Bien, Madame. Je vous remercie. And you?” 
But his words came weakly, his eyes wandered, and 
he paid no attention to Madame ’s cheerful recital, 
touching the good health of herself and family. 
Madame covered his condition with calm unconscious- 
ness and resumed to Virginia: 

‘‘Well, when M. Davee say it to me, it was one 
surprise. I say to myself I must hurry to run say you 
bon jour. And I say ‘Ma foil’ ” ’T is for six year 
her mamma and we was big friend. And she has 
come to live here and, please God, she and me we 
will be big friend aussi. And I was glad. Yes, I was 
glad.” 

“Oh, Madame,” Virginia said softly. “You are 
so kind.” 

“Well,” Madame returned brightly, “I am glad in 
my heart. And when woman is glad in her heart, it 


[ 123 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


is kind wit’ her tongue she will be. N’est-ce past 
vrai?” 

Virginia smiled with trembling lips : 

‘‘Thank you so much for this. Can’t you come in 
and stay a little while?” 

“Not now, no. I t’ank you. I must hurry and go 
cook my old man some breakfast. By and by I will 
come and we will have one big talk, yes ! ’ ’ 

They had the big talk shortly after breakfast. Vir- 
ginia told freely her plans — how she hoped to get 
sewing enough to pay for the bread and coffee and 
clothes for her grandfather and herself. And Madame 
told eagerly of a planter’s wife who was always in 
want of sewing to be done for herself and her children. 

“And if you make good garden,” Madame wound 
up brightly. 

“Yes, I shall make a good garden,” Virginia agreed 
simply. She had no idea of the work that went into 
the making of a garden, of the hot sun and hard labor. 
Other women who were not afraid to work could make 
a garden, therefore she who was so eager to work 
could make one too. So ran her reasoning and Ma- 
dame Croisant was not one to discourage. Virginia 
confessed frankly her ignorance of cooking and 
scrubbing, and Madame responded volubly with pains- 
taking recipes for gumbos made with okra and cray- 
fish — and for scouring: 

“You pound some brick, fine like. You sprinkle 
it plenty on floor. You pour some water, you take 
your palmetto root. Voila in corner yonder — you 
scrub, scrub. All over floor you scrub. You pour 


[ 124 ] 


ON GUARD 


plenty water, yon sweep it off wit’ broom. You take 
your clot’ and get down on knees and yon wipe up 
all water is left on floor. And when your floor dry, 
it will be white, yes. You must not make track on it 
’til it is dry, no ! ” 

And through the whole of the big talk not a word 
or a question that could wound. Not a breath of 
Francois, not a glance at Monsieur’s vacant face. 

Virginia was heartened by the talk. She made the 
gumbo with some okra from the garden and some 
crayfish that Madame sent over and it was a good 
gumbo. After dinner she said bravely: 

^‘Now I will scrub my kitchen floor and it will 
have until supper time to dry without getting any 
tracks on it.” 


[ 125 ] 


CHAPTEE XIV 

Tracks 


Now Madame Croisant had been so busy in telling 
how a kitchen floor should be scrubbed she had for- 
gotten to tell when , — and Virginia did not know. 
A Madame who knows does not take the middle of 
a May day while the kitchen is hot with the fires of 
cooking to scrub her kitchen floor. At that hour 
Madame will sleep, and having waked refreshed will 
pound her bricks in the shade, set her pails of water 
in readiness, and when the supper has been cleared 
away and the late cool evening comes, Madame will 
scrub her kitchen and shut the door satisfied in the 
certainty that it will be well dried before morning 
and in no danger from tracks. 

Virginia did not know these things, but she did 
know that her grandfather’s face had seemed to get 
back a shadow of its strength as he ate the good 
gumbo. And she thought that if he should wake from 
his after-dinner sleep to find everything nice and 
clean — loving cleanliness as he always had — some hap- 
piness might come into his empty eyes. She raided 
Madame Jacobs’ hoard of brick bats, pounded a lot 
of them into dust, and strewed the dust upon her 
floor in haste and eagerness and with a generous hand. 
She drew a bucket of water from the well and brought 
the palmetto scrub from the corner. — It was made 


[ 126 ] 


TEACKS 


of a palmetto root two feet long. A hole had been 
bored into the root and a stout handle thrust into the 
hole. It weighed many pounds and was by far the 
heaviest thing Virginia had ever picked up. But she 
did what Madame said — she slopped a little water on 
the brick dust to soften it and she scrubbed, scrubbed, 
scrubbed. Her hair shook loose and her face ran 
sweat. If there was any breeze stirring that day be- 
tween the old levee and the new it did not come Vir- 
ginia’s way. But she clung to her clumsy tool until 
every inch of the floor had been scrubbed over from 
beginning to end. Then she essayed the second step — 
or was it the third? Because of the scrubbing and 
the heat she was a little dizzy — ^but anyway it was to 
bring water — plenty of water and wash the brick dust 
from the floor with a broom : 

“And the broom will be much lighter than the 
scrubbing brush,” Virginia reflected. 

The well bucket, though, was not light and to bring 
plenty of water means to draw up many buckets from 
the well — using a rope that is rough to tender hands. 
Virginia brought buckets of water and flushed the 
floor. Her shoes got wet and her skirts draggled. 
But no matter, in a minute or two she would be done 
and be all dry and nice looking before her grand- 
father awoke. No, not in a minute or two, there 
was a great deal of brick dust on the floor and it 
stuck there in streaks. Virginia brought water and 
more water. Her arms began to ache with the weight 
of the bucket and her hands to flinch from the rasp 
of the rope. But she must get that brick dust off 

[ 127 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


the floor and the only way to get it off was to wash 
it off. Virginia threw water on and swept it off, 
threw more water on and swept more water off and — 
she won. The floor was clean. She found the floor 
cloth and getting down on her knees began to wipe 
it up as Madame had said. She was so exhausted now 
that she was almost sobbing and so wet with slopping 
and sweating that she was fairly soaked. She backed 
her way on her knees to the door. When the door 
was reached she would shut it and the floor would 
dry without any tracks, though her hair might be 
streaming over her crimson face and her hands be 
nearly raw. 

“Virginia! Don’t you ever do such a thing again! 
What are you thinking of!” A hand closed above 
her elbow, a strong arm at her waist swung her up 
from the floor. “What are you thinking of?” She 
was face to face with Davis and the horror in his eyes. 

“Don’t you know that I’ll send a darkey to do 
this — send a dozen darkies if you need them? Don’t 
ever think of doing such a thing as this again ! Here, 
come in here, listen to me. I can’t let things go on 
this way.” 

Davis swung a chair from the table, seated Virginia 
and knelt down on the wet floor beside her. 

“Can’t you understand how it is?” He took her 
hands and winced to see them so blistered and marred. 
“You were nothing but a child when you made that 
vow. Why in the world should you think it binding 
on you for life? You did not know what you were 
doing” — 


[ 128 ] 


TRACKS 


‘‘Wait, Mr. Davis. No, we cannot speak of this. 
I knew what I was doing. Father Valdmir talked to 
me a long time. He told me what it was to be married 
and that it must be for life. I knew” — 

‘Oh, nonsense! Life — what does a child know”- — 

“Mr. Davis,” Virginia said, she was spent and 
tired. A little more of this and she would be sob- 
bing — where he wished her to be. And there would 
be a wind in his garden troubling and twisting its 
trees, wasting its fruit and its flowers. 

“Mr. Davis, will you do something for me?” 

“I would do anything in reason or out of it, and 
you know it.” 

“Then — will you please go away and never come 
back again?” 

Davis got up, looked at her tired, trembling face 
for a breath and turned to the window across the 
room. Standing there with his back to her, his throat 
aching, his heart hot, he asked in a quiet, pleasant 
voice ; 

“Suppose I promised to go away for a good while, 
wouldn’t that do?” 

“If you would go and never come back”- — 

“I don’t think I could promise to do that — I’m 
afraid I might come back in my sleep. Here, sup- 
pose we let it go that way. We’ll say good-bye for a 
while — until you have time to think it over.” 

“I will not think it over — I cannot.” 

“Well, I can. I will think it over enough for both 
of us. Let it go that way. Good-bye. Promise me 
not to do this again. Any darkey can do it and you 

[ 129 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


can do work that is more worth while. Can’t you 
promise me ? ” 

Virginia could not. Could not find voice for the 
words. His gentleness was so hard to resist — ^if he 
had stormed it would have been easier. 

“Good-bye,” Davis accepted quietly her silence as 
refusal. 

“Good-bye,” Virginia whispered. And he went 
away. 

Virginia put the chair back where it belonged and 
shut the kitchen door carefully; but when the fioor 
dried she found the tracks, big and muddy, made by 
a man’s heavy boots. And kneeling down, blind with 
tears, she laid her hand softly upon the tracks those 
boots had made. 

If Madame Croisant saw the tracks when she came 
late that evening with some milk for the old man’s 
supper she did not let Virginia see that she saw them. 
She staid on talking of the Island folk, telling news, 
until M. Lerot went to bed — and after that, too. 
Talking, talking, a thought of this, a memory of that 
and so on through the twilight until Francois’ name 
was heard in the murmur of blending voices. 

“He is gone and I do not wish him to come back,” 
Virginia told softly. “But, Madame, while he lives 
I am married to him.” 

“C’est bien,” said Madame. “It is true. It is so 
fat’er say. When man and woman make marry it is 
for life, it is not for just so long as man shall please 
or as woman shall please. Some t’ink law can un- 
marry man and woman. Some — ^but not Cat’olic, no !” 


[ 130 ] 


TRACKS 


‘‘I know/’ Virginia said. 

Madame, satisfied, got up to go — searching for a 
parting word: 

‘ ‘ Eh hien, I reckon M. Davee is on levee some more 
tonight. My old man say it is M. Davee will have to 
mend crevasse at Logan. But, me, I know Monsieur. 
While stage is twenty-one and four-tent’ he will not 
go, no. 

Virginia said good night and sat on waiting till the 
stars should rise. Whether Davis was on the levee 
or gone away to Logan, what difference did it make? 
She would still he married to Frangois. 

‘ ‘ It would be best for him that he should go away — 
go much farther away than Logan. He is so strong. 
Once he realizes that it is not right for me to consent 
to a divorce he will put all thought of it aside and 
forget it. Ah — there he is.” Her thoughts wan- 
dered, her eyes grew deep, following the figure limned 
against the high light above the River. A man’s 
figure that paced the levee and turned and paced 
again. A figure that would always be there so long 
as the stage stood at twenty-one and four. 

Because of the crevasse at Logan the stage hung 
at twenty-one and four-tenths for a day longer, 
climbed slowly to touch twenty-four and one-tenth 
on the crest of the rise and then began to fall. 

Virginia began to feel at home on her little farm. 
The money for her sewing encouraged her. Soon, 
she thought she would be able to pay the money she 
owed — 

“The cinque sous,” she said, smiling softly. But 
[ 131 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


about M. Lerot she could not feel cheerful. He woke 
to eat and ate to sleep. He called her by name, even 
smiled when she coaxed him, but his smile was drowsy 
and his eyes as empty as before. 

‘‘I will speak to Madame Croisant about it,^’ Vir- 
ginia resolved. “Maybe she will know — of something 
that will rouse him: — or, if it is better that he should 
not be roused.^’ 

Madame Croisant was getting her dinner ready, 
scalding and peeling tomatoes for an okra gumbo. 
Virginia found a knife and pan and sat down by the 
table to slice the pods of okra while she talked : 

“It is about my Grandpa, Madame, she said. 
‘ ‘ He seems well, but he does not quite — Do you know 
of anything I could do?’’ 

“Well,” Madame said. She considered it, her eye- 
brows raised above her steaming task. “Well?” Of 
course Madame knew what it was any man must do 
if he would be happy and satisfied with his lot on 
earth, but politeness required her to be not too prompt 
in reply. 

“Well?” and then she brought it out in triumph. 
“If he should plant cowpea, maybe? Voila, Virginia, 
if man would be young — strong — ^he must work. It 
is so in garden. If flower quit work it will quit 
grow — it will fade in leaf, it will hang head — It is 
so in woods. Viola, how is it wit’ tree when it quit 
work ? ’ ’ — Madame, full of her theme, shook the scald- 
ing strips of peel from her fingers, faced around with 
enthusiasm, checked sharply and cried: 

“M. Davee!” And then she said, “Ah, it is de 


[ 132 ] 


TRACKS 


pleasure. You will walk in kitchen, Monsieur. Me, 
I will make you some coffee. Ah, it is de pleasure/^ 

It may have been the blue in his nice, new linen 
suit that made Davis' eyes so bright; it may have 
been the sunshine that made his glance so glad. Vir- 
ginia could not tell. She dropped her eyes before 
his hand had reached his hat. Slicing okra intently 
she heard him saying in a nice pleasant way: 

^‘No, no, not any coffee for me, Madame. Didn't 
I leave a compass here with you?" 

‘ ‘ Oh, mais oui. And I have it here, your compass, ' ' 
she brought it forth proud and laughing from behind 
her lard jar : 

^^Rat is so had I was afraid it would get knock from 
shelf if I did not put it behind somet'ing." 

‘‘Ah, yes; thank you. This is very fine." He 
turned it in his hands. “Yes, I thought it was this 
one I had left with you." 

“You are going away, Monsieur?" 

“Why, yes. They are sending me to Logan, I 
believe. ' ' 

“Ah. It is so my old man say. He say it is only 
you can close crevasse yonder." 

Davis' eyebrows lifted a little, his tone was amused: 

“Is that so? Well, and now I must say good-bye 
to you and thank you many times for your goodness 
to me." 

“Ah, Monsieur. But you were so welcome! 

Davis turned toward Virginia, his voice just as 
kind and pleasant as when he spoke to Madame: 

“And won't you say good-bye to me, too?" 


[ 133 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


Virginia dropped the knife nervously to dry her 
hand on her apron, but his hand was already there 
closing her hand in gratefully, all gemmed with okra 
though it was. 

‘‘Good-bye, and thank you too for your patience 
and kindness.’^ 

The same kindly pleasant tone to both of them, the 
same steady smile at parting and for both of them 
together at the door a lifted hat. Then Davis turned 
around sharply, came back into the kitchen, put his 
compass down on the table at the side of which Vir- 
ginia was sitting, put his hat down beside the compass 
and said briskly: 

“See here, there is something you two big friends 
might do for me.’’ 

“And what it is. Monsieur? We will be proud, 
yes.” 

Davis holding open his coat and with bent face 
feeling for something in his breast pocket, told her 
cheerfully : 

“You might drop me a postal card once a week to 
let me know — I had them in my pocket — to let me 
know — how things are going here. You’ll be crossing 
that new levee every day and if you see any hogs on 
it, or any crayfish hole — ^you could let me know — 
Here, I’ll address these cards — Let’s see? Bogue 
Vache, or, have you a post office on the Island?” 

“We have office on Island, but Monsieur” — 

“How do you call it, your post office?” 

‘ ‘ Crebiche. Mais, Monsieur ’ ’ — 

“Craybish! How do you spell it?” 

[ 134 ] 


TEACKS 


Madame put her head sideways : 

^‘Virginia can spell it for you, maybe.’’ 

‘‘Yes, maybe she can! Can you? Will you be so 
good?” 

Virginia spelled slowly, without looking up: 

“Crebiche.” 

“Ah, I see, it means crayfish.” He took it down 
in his note book. “Thank you.” Now I shall address 
these cards — about where I ’ll be working this summer 
and every week if everything is all right. Here, you 
can just write on one of them ‘ All right at Crebiche. ’ 
If anything is wrong you will write ‘ Something wrong 
at Crebiche’ and I will come at once. Do you think 
you can do all that for me ? ” 

“Me,” Madame said eagerly, “I can tell Virginia 
if I see hog, if I see crayfish. But it is Virginia must 
write it you.” 

“And do you think you could find time to do that? 
Drop me one of these cards every week?” 

Virginia bent over her okra, Madame Croisant was 
watching her. Davis, dropping his pen to the floor to 
cover her pause : 

“Just once a week?” 

“Once a month — I might”: — 

“That will help a whole lot! Thank you!” He 
moved to the end of the table, put down the pack of 
postal cards and leaning down began to address them. 
Writing rapidly, he said to Madame nicely with his 
neat utterance: 

“See, here, Madame, can’t you spare me one of 
your pretty posies out yonder for my coat?” 

[ 135 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


Indeed Madame could in a minute she would have 
it here — it was sweet olive that he liked best of all. 
Ah, she had not forgotten that! 

Davis leaning over the table, his hand gripping the 
edge of it, the pen caught cigar-wise between his 
fingers, his eyes intent on the card, said instantly : 

“If you had been his wife it would have been dif- 
ferent. But you never were — ^his — wife.” 

Virginia thought to keep silent, just to go on slicing 
okra till Madame came again. But he wanted it, that 
assurance that was hers to give — and it was so little 
she could give him — 

“I never kissed him.” 

Davis shot the postals to the far end of the table 
and leaned over, writing hard, his broad blue sleeve 
between Virginia’s face and the entering Madame ’s 
eyes. 

‘ ‘ Oh, but Monsieur. You should have chair 1 ’ ’ 

“No! No, this is all right. I am doing famously. 
I’ll be through in a minute.” 

In a moment more, when Virginia had lifted her 
face with a quick, recovering breath, he straightened 
up, pushed the postals to one side, took the sprig of 
sweet olive with a pleasant word of thanks, caught 
up his compass and hat and so went away quickly 
to catch a boat, baring his head to them both at the 
door, but not offering to shake hands — not quite dar- 
ing to perhaps. 

His back looked broad in the sunshine to a woman’s 
watching eyes. 

When the garden was empty and the light shining 
[ 136 ] 


TRACKS 


down on an unshadowed path, Virginia took the cow- 
pea seed Madame urged upon her and went to rouse 
her grandfather from his endless dreaming : 

“Voila,^^ she cried brightly, speaking the French 
that he seemed to understand most readily, “Yoila. 
Cowpea seed for you, my grandpa. It is Madame 
Croisant send them to you, to plant in your garden. 
You would wish to plant some now, maybe 

Monsieur took the seed and turned them over in 
his palm. 

‘‘Non,’’ he said slowly. “Wind will take garden — 
it is not for me to plant. Wind shall take all I have 
if it wish. It is so I have make my swear to Le 
Vent.” 

“Le Vent,” the words were like a whip. Virginia, 
quivering, slipped inside the house: 

“Oh, it was a wrong thing for me to do. I should 
not have shaken hands with him — I should never have 
promised to send the cards each month. He must 
forget about me. He must! Oh, it was wrong of 
me!” 

Through all the first month of Davis’ absence Vir- 
ginia debated her course between two lines of dis- 
honor. To send the card and remind him of herself ; 
or, not to send it and so break the promise she had 
made to him — the only promise. When the end of 
the month came she took the package from its secret 
place. 

‘ ‘ I will send one this month as I promised, but next 
month I will just let the day go by. When he finds 


[ 137 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


that i am beginning to forget, he will forget also. 
She wrote what she had to write : 

“Everything is all right at Crebiche,” then turned 
the card over : 

“Richard Davis,” she had never thought about his 
having a first name — had always thought of him as 
Mr. Davis.” “Richard.” It looked very friendly 
there, written in his short, strong characters. 
“Richard — Dick!” Virginia flushed up furiously 
and hid the card. Some one was coming up her 
garden walk. It was Madame Croisant full of her 
importance, remembering the date. 

“You have not see any hog on levee?” she ques- 
tioned eagerly. 

“No,” Virginia had not seen a hog on the levee. 
Nor had she seen any crayfish hole in the side of it.” 

“And me eit’er,” Madame cried. “And I have 
watch — God knows I have watch plenty. You wiU 
send card to M. Davee? You will tell him ^Every- 
t’ing is all right at Crebiche’ — just like he say. And 
me, I will take it now and go put it in post office. ’ ’ 

After Madame had gone away with the card Vir- 
ginia sat down on the kitchen steps to think. If Ma- 
dame was going to “watch” like this, what was she 
to do? There would be no forgetting at the end of 
the second month nor of the third. — And that was 
how Mr. Davis had meant it should be! That was 
why his eyes had been so blue in their smiling, why 
his clasp had been so gentle, his voice so kind. He 
had thought out a plan to have his own way. No 
doubt he had deliberately thought it all out while he 

[ 138 ] 


TRACKS 


walked the levee up there keeping guard through the 
night with the stage at twenty-four and one-tenth. 

^‘He is so strong/’ Virginia thought almost angrily, 
and then turned with the weary thought from her 
indignation : 

What could his strength avail — prolong a little the 
hour of their parting — make it a little harder for his 
dear brave heart. 

‘*If it was only for myself/’ she said, would not 
care. I would rather love him and be lonely all my 
life — But for him ! Oh, it is wrong, wrong. I must 
not write to him again.” 

It was July now and very warm. Virginia worked 
busily, meaning not to know when the month should 
end, meaning in some shrewd way to escape Madame ’s 
vigilance. She worked in the garden in the early 
hours and the late ones, as Madame Croisant had 
taught her to do. Pulling away the weeds and burrs 
that grew so eagerly in that rich black ground, plant- 
ing peas where the melon vines had home their fruit 
and died ; planting cabbages when the tomatoes 
failed; planting potatoes for the winter, garlic also, 
and onions. M. Lerot looked on dreamily, he did not 
try to help. The wind had wasted the fair garden 
that he had made and Monsieur would never plant 
another. Virginia knew. And always she counted the 
days till the end of the month should come that she 
might forget it when it came. 

But before the end of the month was within ten 
days of its time Madame Croisant came hurrying, and 
in excitement to Virginia’s kitchen door. She had 

[ 139 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


a letter in her hand. On the back of it was written : 
‘‘Madame Jean Baptiste Croisant.’’ It was for her, 
the man at the post office had said so. But why! 

“Before I ain’t ever had letter,” Madame cried. 
She thrust it upon Virginia. “And I cannot read. 
Ma foi. For why should somebody write letter to 
me?” 

Virginia’s heart caught itself together at the sight 
of those bravely written words, her voice was low: 

“You want me to read it for you, Madame?” 

“But, yes. If you please, I wish to know — Ah, it 
is de fine t’ing school is. ’T is for free hour I have 
been wish to know — and I could not leave my dinner 
till it is cook!” 

There was nothing so wild or wonderful about the 
letter. Just a courteous request that Madame would 
avail herself of the first chance messenger to send the 
writer word of M. Lerofs state. 

“He served me nobly once,” the writer said, “And 
if there is anything I can do for him in his old age I 
want to do it.” And this ran down smoothly into 
a pleasantly worded request that Madame would hand 
the enclosed envelope to the old man ’s grand-daughter 
and so with kindly words of well-wishing, the letter 
made an end, leaving Madame to cry in delight: 
‘ ‘ Ah, it is fine man M. Davee is ! ” Leaving Virginia 
to wait as well as she could until Madame should go 
back again to the dinner that might be burning. 

And when she was alone, the envelope torn open 
with trembling finger, the stiff, clean sheet unfolded, — 
what were the words that danced and staggered be- 


[ 140 ] 


TRACKS 


fore her eyes? No courteous salutation — ^how could 
he address her as Madame or a Friend — how might 
he address her otherwise? But there in the middle 
of the sheet, rather badly written, as though his hand 
shook a little at the time : 

was in New Orleans recently and while there 
consulted an eminent authority upon divorce, etc. 
He advises me that it might be possible to get a mar- 
riage vow annulled by special dispensation from the 
Pope. He does not speak encouragingly, but if you 
will only write a ‘yes' in the corner of your next card 
I shall take steps immediately." 

It was signed, because he could honestly sign it 
so — 

“Your — Richard Davis." 

And for three hours it had been lying around in 
Madame Croisant's kitchen. How could Madame have 
been so careless ! Suppose it had been lost — ^had fallen 
into the fire! Virginia was clinging to the letter, 
conning it over and over, each word, each penstroke — 
her precious possession. His hand had held the paper, 
his eyes had looked upon it, his breath blown over it. 
And it was so like him — each word. She could hear 
him speaking them, his neat enunciation, his clearly 
sounded syllables. 

By and by Virginia came to the comprehension of 
his meaning and to the hopelessness of his hope. “A 
special dispensation 1 ' ' 

“No," she said softly. “There is no hope of that 
end — he would only waste years perhaps trying for 


[ 141 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GAEDEN 


it. If he once began he would never cease to try for 
it. No, no, he must not try.’^ 

She saw Davis’ eyes — ^how the blue tones in them 
would brighten if he should read her “Yes” in the 
comer of the card; saw his lips parting in his sunny 
smile, showing the tips of those fine white teeth of 
his; and she said happily: 

‘ ‘ I am glad he does not wear a mustache. It would 
be such a shame to cover a fine face like that with 
hair.” Then she remembered that she would never 
write that “Yes” on the card — that she must not. 

Must she write a “no!” How quickly the days 
ran down to the end of the month. How the hours 
crowded her. She must not write as he wished, she 
could not write as he did not wish. The end of the 
month came and went and then in a day or two came 
Madame Croisant, hurrying and excited again: 

“I have anot’er letter,” she cried. “Vite, is it 
from M. Davee?” 

It was. And it stated very nicely and pleasantly 
that he had had no news from Crebiche this month, 
and that if he did not hear at once he would be down 
Sunday to see what was wrong. 

“You did not send card!” Madame cried, “You 
forget. And, me, I forget it also. Oh, Virginia, for 
God’s sake, go get card and write it now. Me I will 
run to office wit’ it. Ma foi! If M. Davee should 
come Sunday and should be mad! Me, I have see 
him mad once, I do not wish to see him mad again. 
God knows I do not. C’est terrible.” 

Virginia laughed out from her heart — feeling her- 


[ 142 ] 


TRACKS 


self close to Davis, looking up to the smile in his eyes, 
telling him in tender teasing what a terrible fellow 
Madame Croisant believed him to be. The laugh 
ended in a sob. She went in quickly, wrote the card 
and the “No” across the corner of it, and brought 
it — with the remaining cards to Madame Croisant: 

“This is the one to be mailed, Madame. And these 
others — You had better keep them and get Father 
Adolph to fix up one for you every month. I can’t 
write them any more.” 

“You cannot?” Madame questioned, and added 
quickly : 

“C’est bien. I will speak wit’ Father Adolph.” 
She sighed for the sorrow of it as she went away, the 
gentle little Madame who knew the teachings of a 
woman’s heart even as she knew the teachings of 
her church. 

Life was still enough for Virginia after that. All 
the agony of indecision was past and the load of 
longing lay without stirring on her heart. She kept 
very busy and her saving grew until they were nearly 
as large as the hotel bill that Davis had paid. Soon, 
very soon, she would be able to return to him his 
“cinque sous.” By the end of summer, she thought. 
For the fame of her sewing went more and more 
widely abroad. The little garments she made so 
daintily were always in demand. She who was 
neither married woman nor maid, who might never 
know the throb of mother love, sat hour after hour 
through her long still day stitching tenderly, making 
the cunning little clothes only tiny babies wear. 

[ 143 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


“If I could know that he was happy — that he had 
forgotten!’^ Sewing is monotonous work — it leaves 
the mind free for much thinking. Virginia had had 
time to live over again each touch and tone and 
glance, and to think over and over again: 

“If I only knew that he was happy. For myself 
I would rather be lonesome for him all my life than 
never to have loved him at all.’^ 

The days went by slowly and in silence. The 
pecan boughs were bending with their load of nuts; 
the oranges were beginning to show faint gleams of 
gold against the green of leaf and stem before Vir- 
ginia heard news of Davis. 

‘ ‘ Who you t ’ink was in my kitchen today ? ’ ’ Madame 
Croisant came asking, and Virginia’s heart sank low. 
He had been in Madame Croisant ’s kitchen, just two 
hundred yards away and had not come where for 
only a moment she might see his hair and eyes. Well, 
but then she had wanted him to forget. 

Madame Croisant was telling busily all about it. 
— “and my old man ask him if he has finish wit’ 
crevasse at Logan, and he say yes, about finished. 
And he say: 

“ ‘Oh, bot’er, bot’er! It is such darned tomfoolery. 
Piling up dirt to stop that River. What we ought 
to have is a wall’ ” — and he talk plenty of wall — of 
what it was to be made. Me I ain’t ever hear of stuff 
he talk about. And my old man ! He keep say ‘ Sho, 
sho’, but I don’t t’ink he know for what it is he say 
‘sho’ so much. I ask him when M. Davee go, what 
it is wall will be, maybe? And he only laugh. Say, 

[ 144 ] 


TRACKS 


‘Ah, Mon Dieu, M. Davee is sore on crayfish, yes. He 
has not forgot dike he lost last year.^ But before M. 
Davee go — Virginia, he tell me he wants to see how 
my garden is grow. Well, me, I say, it will be pleas- 
ure to show it him. But what it is I have in garden 
to show ? Summer flower is all dead — autumn flower 
is not yet open! Mais, M. Davee he does not seem 
to be look for flower. He just keep walk, W£ilk. So 
I say to him: 

“ ‘You would like some tobacco. Monsieur.^ 

“But he say: 

“ ‘No, no^ — “you know how he say it,^^ ‘No, I can’t 
smoke de dam stuff.’ 

“He keep walk some more. And me, it was hot, 
yes, it was twelve o’clock. I was most sweat. But 
I keep walk too! And I t’ink pretty soon Monsieur 
will get tired maybe. He does not get tired, but when 
he has walked some more he ask me — and, Virginia, 
it seem funny t’ing for him to ask me too! He ask 
me how many men dere is on Island who have Albert 
for name. And how I could tell him? How I could 
know? 

“I tell him it is plenty, God knows. 

“Well he take out his book and get pen ready and 
he say : 

“ ‘Give me name of every man who is called Albert.’ 

“I was scared. I pray to Holy Virgin, and Vir- 
ginia! I t’ink of book in church where fat’er write 
name when boy is christen — and I tell him of book 
and how name is dere. 


[ 145 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


‘‘M. Davee look hard at me, he say *Booh in 
church?^ And he say quick: 

‘‘ ‘Ah, I understand!’ He look at his watch, he 
lift his hat, he put his hand on post and over my 
garden fence he go into road ! 

“Cherie,” Madame concluded soberly, “I am sorry 
for das Albert when M. Davee shall find him. ’ ’ 

“Yes,” Virginia answered quietly, “Yes, I sup- 
pose so.” 

If Davis had made any inquiries about her or her 
grandfather, Madame would have told it. But he had 
come and gone, absorbed in his business bothers, 
dreaming his old dreams of the concrete wall that 
should one day control the River and make her a 
source of untold power. He had gone back to the 
fine far things they used to talk about when he sat 
beside her at dinner in the grimy hotel, there in 
Bogue Vache. 

It was better so, much better so. She had been 
praying all summer that he might forget. How 
could he have remembered her in the midst of his 
crowding cares and high achievements! 

“Oh, yes, it is much better so.” Telling her heart 
this patiently and persistently as though it were a 
truth her heart found hard to hear, Virginia climbed 
to the top of the old levee to walk where he had 
walked so many nights when the stage was high, to 
note how lonely the River looked lying low between 
her banks under the late September sunshine, to feel 
the weariness and the wistfulness of those far away 


[ 146 ] 


TRACKS 


puffs of smoke that marked the passage of some stately 
packet steaming her easy way down stream. 

Was it The City of the South? And, if she had 
gone aboard that night. 

^‘No, no,” Virginia insisted. But that he should 
have been so near and she had not seen him. A few 
hours ago he had been in Madame Croisant’s garden, 
and now — ^where was he? 

The River went slowly, the breeze died down, the 
smoke streamed heavily from the oncoming stacks, 
and it was as lonely on the levee as it had been on 
the land below. 


[ 147 ] 


CHAPTER XV 

The Garden Where the Wind Had 
Ceased to Wander 

“No, the landing below will be nearer than Bogue 
Vache/^ Davis leaned on the guards and looked 
down at the water, chafing impatiently at the slow 
progress the boat was making. Since he had given 
Madame that hot walk around her garden he had 
traveled far. When he went to the priest’s house to 
gain access to the church register of baptisms he 
found that the book had been locked away and that 
Father Adolph had gone to a sick parishioner, carry- 
ing the key with him. Where had he gone ? 

“To Alphonse Savier’s place,” so the old house- 
keeper said. 

Davis knew where that was — ^not more than five 
miles away. The quickest way to get the key would 
be to gallop over to the other end of the Island and 
ask Father Adolph for it. Davis had his horse, plenty 
of time, and he wanted to see that register. But he 
found when he got there that it was not Alphonse 
Savier who lived here, it was Alphonse Savier pere. 
The Alphonse that the priest had gone to see was 
“way up River, twenty mile, maybe tirty.” It was 
quite probable Father Adolph would stay there all 
night. Davis had not time to gallop that far, but 
there was a train going up. He would take the train, 

[ 148 ] 


THE WINDLESS GAEDEN 


get the key and catch a boat or hire a latinch or 
something coming down. It was more than thirty 
miles, nearer forty. Davis got there, found the priest, 
received the key, ran down to the landing and found 
two boats in — The City of the South and a new boat, 
making, they said, her first trip down the River. 
Davis took his passage on the new boat. Frangois 
was running regularly on The City of the South, gam- 
bling in her Texas, and Davis knew it. The boat 
backed slowly out into the stream, swung her bows 
round, got under headway. Davis drove his hand 
into his pocket, felt the key there and beside it a 
crumbling flower: 

‘ ‘ If she would only move along ! ^ ’ 

And yet if the boat did move, if he got the register 
and read the record and found out which Albert it 
was she loved. What good would it all do? 

' ' None, that I can see ! ” 

The boat had answered his prayer for speed, the 
water was going in swells from under her paddle- 
boxes, the wind brushed his cheek. 

‘ ‘ If she does love Albert — if she does ! She was too 
young to know what love is. If I could only teach 
her to know.’' — He leaned further over the rail. A 
flush had flung its way hotly to his hair and all the 
passengers seemed to be suddenly crowding the 
guards. 

In an hour they would be passing the old crayfish 
bitten levee. 

‘‘If I only knew that she was well-cared for and 
happy — ^if there was any sense in the separation!” 

[ 149 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


A cheer tore through his preoccupation. 

“Why, what is it all about? Ah, I see, we are 
racing her.^^ 

It was a daring thing for a new boat to do, thus 
to gaily throw the challenge to the fastest boat on the 
River, and a brave thing to drive forward keeping 
nose and nose with the City of the South. But why 
couldn’t she beat her — win the record on her first 
trip down! The interest swelled swiftly to excite- 
ment; the pilot rang his bell, the captain gave eager 
orders, and the man down in the engine room did all 
he dared — and more. On The City of the South 
passengers lined the guards, defying, taunting the 
temerity that would pass them by ; the captain gnawed 
his lip, the roustabouts rolled their eyes, and up in 
the Texas the gamblers played poker, betting horse 
and betting home on the turn of a card. The boats 
raced on, the late sun shining from the whiteness of 
their waterline to the blackness of their stacks. Vir- 
ginia, from the levee leaned to watch. Could they 
beat her, the beautiful stately boat, so dear because 
his voice had named her? Nose and nose the packets 
held their places, their black smoke streamed back 
like a banner, the water churned and swung. An 
even race — but below them was a bend and the “City” 
on the outward curve of it. She must do better or 
be beaten. A cry went up from her guard, imploring, 
compelling. She must do better. The captain an- 
swered with his orders, the roustabouts yelled, the 
engineer went wild. And so, just as she came abreast 
of the levee where Virginia stood, in a great uprush- 

[ 150 ] 


THE WINDLESS GARDEN 


ing cloud of steam and thunder, ‘^The City’^ ceased 
to be. 

‘^She has blown up,’’ Virginia cried aloud in 
anguish. “The City of the South has blown up.” A 
moment ago she had been there, proud and swift and 
fair to see. And now there was a wreck upon the 
River, some of the men who had cheered were drown- 
ing and some of them were dead. 

With the steam screaming from her escape pipe 
the new packet circled and swung bows on the cur- 
rent, a boat put off from her side and in it, standing, 
calmly giving orders was a man in a blue linen suit 
and panama hat. There were other boats also, and 
rafts and belts and ropes flung for rescue. But Vir- 
ginia did not see them. There was for her only that 
straight, up-standing flgure in the boat that went 
about so cooly taking in those that struggled and 
cried for help, and taking in presently one who did 
not struggle at all. The standing man stooped when 
they laid the body down, bent over it, made sure, — 
then taking his hat in his teeth sprang lightly into 
the River and began to swim ashore: 

* ‘ Oh, Dick, ’ ’ Virginia cried in terror. * ‘ Oh, Dick. ’ ’ 
She ran down to the bank as though in being there 
she might reach a hand to catch his hand — way out 
there in the muddy water. ‘ ‘ Oh, Dick. ” If a cramp 
should seize him; if an eddy should suck him in. 
“Oh, Dick!” 

Davis swam on, reached the bank and climbed it, 
settled his hat and took her hands — And Virginia said 
softly : 


[ 161 ] 


THE WIND IN THE GARDEN 


“Ah, you are wet.’’ 

“Yes,” Davis said. “Yes, the River was that way. 
When they lifted his body in I felt that you ought to 
know. I came across to tell you. Now tell me” — 

Virginia had been watching the little stream of water 
that was spinning from his pocket, not understanding 
at all what he said, hearing only his voice, the deep 
dear timbre of it. He was safe, after that reckless 
swim, safe and well. When his voice broke off 
abruptly, nervously, her eyes went up in alarm to his 
face: 

“You are so white. You will take cold in your wet 
clothes.” 

“You told me once that you loved Albert,” his 
voice was controlled again and steady. 

“Albert? My cousin? Oh, when we were little.” 

“Virginia. Tell me, who it is you love!” 

Virginia began to beg brokenly of his mastery for 
mercy : 

“Mr. Davis, while Francois is alive”; — 

“But Francois is not alive, my child. That is what 
I keep telling you. Can’t you understand? He was 
on The City of the South when she blew up. Tell me — 
Virginia ? — Virginia. ’ ’ 

And even the River grew kind and carried the 
crowd away; shouting men and drowning men, drift- 
ing boat and debris, carried it all away around her 
bend leaving the man and woman alone in their garden 
where the wind had ceased to wander, that they might 
dress it and keep it and make it a holy habitation for 
the heart. 


[ 162 ] 










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